BP is a well-known name across the global energy market, with projects ranging from upstream exploration and production to downstream energy delivery. Throughout all its operations, BP is dedicated to providing innovative services and product excellence, earning it a reputation as a leading energy provider worldwide. In Africa, BP has spent over a century delivering essential oil and gas exploration, crude oil importation, and refining services. Once refined, these products are supplied as fuel through its retail outlets, ensuring smooth everyday operations. Specifically in South Africa, BP’s operations centre around the petroleum market, where it is now one of the region’s leading petroleum companies, driven by a commitment to deliver energy for today and the future.
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In South Africa, BP operates over 500 branded service stations providing vital fuel and retail products. These stations include company-owned, company-leased, and dealer-owned sites, designed to offer convenient services through BP Express and Pick n Pay Express shops, along with its Wild Bean Cafes. BP also manages six fuel storage terminals: two are fully owned by BP Southern Africa, two are jointly owned in a 50/50 partnership with Sasol, and another is an equal joint venture with Shell. The last fuel storage terminal is owned in equal partnership between Astrong, BP Southern Africa, and Engen. Across South Africa’s downstream sector, BP is focused on providing fuel products for transportation, heating, and lighting, as well as lubricants to keep engines and industries running. The supply of these petrochemicals is crucial to South Africa’s daily operations, and by providing such products, BP continues to support energy access across the country.
Across its service stations, BP delivers its BP Ultimate fuel product, which features the company’s ACTIVE technology. This fuel product is the flagship fuel product under the BP South Africa brand, which focuses on engine performance and has earned it many accolades for its enhanced performance properties. Alongside fuel products, BP has its leading lubricant brand, Castrol, which is the world’s leading manufacturer and distributor of premium lubricating oils and related services to the automotive and industrial customers of South Africa. These products are vital for car manufacturing industries, and so BP supplies a broad range of lubricants designed for a vast range of operating conditions and environments.
In May, BP launched a new programme which would see a significant increase in its presence across South Africa. The programme would see 40 new service stations added to the company’s portfolio, whilst its existing locations would be upgraded to meet the current and future demands of its customers. To facilitate the delivery of these new stations and the logistics needed to do this, BP announced it has partnered with DP World and Makwande Supply & Distribution, who will help BP to outsource specialised logistics functions, in order to improve delivery efficiency and resilience across its locations in both urban and rural areas.
With the expansion of its service station locations, BP is making both its fuel products and its retail stores more accessible for those across the country. Service stations often provide essentials alongside their fuel offerings, which ensures that locals have access to a wide variety of goods, even when traditional shops may be closed. This customer-focused service delivery is further enhanced by BP’s expansion plans, which will also see electric vehicle chargers installed at many of its petrol stations. BP plans to make electric charging more readily available across South Africa, ensuring that customers can recharge or refuel their cars with BP. The electric vehicle industry is a key sector that will shape transportation for the future, with electric vehicles being widely adopted as a sustainable option in line with global emission reduction goals. Therefore, by providing recharging for electric vehicles across more of its locations, BP can remain a leading fuel brand delivering the vital resources and services meeting the demands of its customers every day.
In line with the expansion of its service station with electric vehicle charging points, BP is continuing to expand its retail locations, with many of them now including family-friendly rest areas, readily available Wi-Fi, and a range of retail offerings. This necessity comes as customers will spend more time at the refuelling stations whilst waiting for their electric vehicles to charge. Therefore, with a more developed retail and rest area, customers are further incentivised to use BP’s electric vehicle charging points as they are designed to suit its customers’ needs. For BP, its integration of electric charging into its service stations in South Africa moves the country towards its wider African strategy to prioritise inclusive growth and investment into key infrastructure that will pioneer the future of sustainable energy development.
This focus on the future through infrastructural development and sustainable practices has allowed BP to remain a leader in South Africa’s energy sector. In fact, in 2024, BP celebrated 100 years of operation in South Africa, with the celebration focused on ‘Reimaging Energy for the Future’. This goal allowed BP, along with industry leaders, to explore the pivotal themes and challenges facing the energy sector both in South Africa and on a wider scale in order to deliver solutions that meet the needs of today, whilst protecting the world of the future.
In the announcement of the anniversary, Taelo Mojapelo, CEO of BP in South Africa, highlighted that “Today the global and South African energy landscape faces new demand, including the move to a lower carbon world, changing consumer needs, increased competition in fuel retailing, and the imperative to have greater diversity in the workforce. These changes present us with new opportunities, and we are responding by prioritising the optimisation of our supply model, focusing on high grading our forecourt and convenience portfolio as well as emphasising diversity, equity and inclusion in everything we do”. Mojapelo’s comments here highlight the vital role BP has long played and will continue to play in developing South Africa’s energy market to protect energy delivery and move towards the infrastructure, as we have seen with the EV charging development, needed for the future of energy development.
Across BP South Africa’s operation, there is a keen focus on delivering fuels and lubricants via its retail locations that keep daily life running smoothly, whilst working towards the future of energy development. For South Africa, the development of infrastructure is fundamental to BP’s role across the downstream petroleum market. From its delivery of new locations and the expansion of its existing ones, BP is working to expand its role across the country and deliver its vital fuel, lubricants and retail products to support customers across South Africa every day.
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