The state company Čepro buys Robin Oil gas stations. The information of SZ Byznys, which they wrote about the upcoming merger in September of this year, was thus confirmed.
The transaction is now being assessed by the Office for the Protection of Economic Competition, on whose website the information about the transaction appeared.
“The proposed merger of competitors is to take place mainly in the areas of retail sales of fuel and ancillary goods at gas stations and wholesale sales of fuel in the territory of the Czech Republic. The decision in the above matter has not yet been issued,” the office said in the announcement.
With more than two hundred EuroOil pumps, Čepro is currently the third largest gas station network in terms of number and at the same time the fourth most important network in terms of sales. It is known especially for pumps in smaller villages, where it has a permanent clientele. It recently opened its first hydrogen filling station in Mstětice near Prague.
If there were to be a connection with the Robin Oil network, the network of the state-owned company would now have almost 300 pumps and it would be strengthened, especially in Prague, where it has not been prominent until now.
Robin Oil belongs to Jiří Zoubek, who in the 1990s was one of the first entrepreneurs in the field of fuel distribution. Today, Robin Oil is among the nine largest fuel sellers in the Czech Republic, and Čepro is its long-term partner.
According to the annual report, Robin Oil sold 156 million liters of fuel in 2022 and earned a total of 5.4 billion crowns. Profit after taxation was 83 million crowns.
Čepro is one of the largest industrial enterprises in the country – it operates a network of 1,200 kilometers of product pipelines and has 650 storage tanks with a capacity of over 1.76 million cubic meters. Last year, the company recorded a profit after taxation of 1.99 billion crowns – this is a slight decrease compared to 2021, when the profit was 2.04 billion.
The Czech Republic is one of the most competitive markets in the world, with around four thousand public gas stations operating here. The country thus has a much denser network of gas stations than neighboring countries – there is a public gas station for roughly every 2,700 inhabitants.
