Profits at Maxol jumped by almost 60 per cent in 2021 to €26.9 million, some €10 million higher than pre-pandemic 2019, as demand for fuel and forecourt services recovered following a steep, pandemic-induced decline in 2020.
Group chief executive officer Brian Donaldson, who has been in situ since 2016, said a number of “quirks” had contributed to the forecourt retailer’s performance in 2021, a year in which the company’s profits in Northern Ireland more than doubled to £7.6 million.
Along with the results, Maxol – which is pressing ahead with efforts to move its core offering from fuel to convenience food – has also announced a €100 million investment strategy to continue to “future-proof” against waning demand for fossil fuels.
However, Mr Donaldson said the group has to “earn that to invest that” over the next five years, which means the strategy “very much depends on what happens in the domestic economy”.
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Looking ahead, he said the business was grappling with significant short and long-term challenges.
While consumer demand for Maxol’s food and retail offerings remains buoyant, Mr Donaldson said the group expected households to tighten their budgets in 2023.
“Over the next sort of 24 months I think could be fairly bumpy. So it is going to be a very different period in 2023 and 2024.”
Electric vehicles
In the longer run, Mr Donaldson said the business would invest in electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure beginning with Northern Ireland’s first dedicated EV hub at Maxol Kinnegar in Co Down.
In the Republic, he said, the strategy would be different. With the Government reportedly poised to reduce its 2030 target to having one million EVs on the road, Mr Donaldson said: “The first thing we’re not going to do is to build 100 EV hubs because there isn’t a business case to support that. But what we are and what we have been doing is developing an EV model, the first of which will open on December 6th in Kinnegar.”
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Mr Donaldson said that the “staycation” trend had been “a massive accelerator in terms of footfall” for the brand, which operates some 242 service stations on the island of Ireland, 112 of which are directly owned by the company.
He said the McMullan family-owned group “benefited exponentially” more in Northern Ireland – where Maxol’s sites tend to be larger than in the Republic – from consumers opting to holiday domestically during the pandemic.
He said the group continued to benefit from the staycation trend in 2022.
“Travel abroad did start to accelerate once you get into July and August,” Mr Donaldson said. “But I think with the initial confusion and a lot of the disruption in terms of getting through flights and through airports, people have more or less pivoted back had to holidaying at home and our business strategically benefited from that. So staycations made a massive difference.”
Mr Donaldson also said that the switch to hybrid working was the other “big change” Maxol benefited from last year, he said.
“The slower recovering sites would be those that would be closest to Dublin city centre and that’s no surprise,” he said.
“At best people are probably commuting into the office three days a week. Our particular network, most of our stores are all in residential neighbourhoods. Those stores have actually got an extra two days’ trading because we are servicing people’s needs. That’s for breakfast, for lunch and for evening meals solutions. It’s even just to get out of the house.”
