Vivo Energy Kenya, the retailer of Shell-branded fuel products, has extended its dominance of local petroleum sales in the year ended December as its rivals lost market share.
The latest industry data from the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (Epra) shows that the oil marketer increased its market share by 0.5 percentage points to 21.7 percent in the review period.
TotalEnergies Marketing Kenya was the biggest loser in the market share war as its stake fell by 2.5 percentage points to 16.4 percent.
Ola Energy, Rubis Energy Kenya and its sister firm Gulf Energy are the other firms that posted significant increases in their market shares in the period under review.
The data shows that Rubis and Ola Energy gained 1.2 percentage points each to control 8.6 percent and 6.7 percent of the local petroleum sales respectively. Gulf Energy grew its market share to 2.7 percent from 2.3 percent a year earlier.
Rubis and Gulf, jointly as subsidiaries of Rubis Energie, have however seen their combined market share fall substantially from the high of 21.2 percent in 2019 when they were acquired by the French multinational.
Rubis Energie was betting on the two acquisitions to grow scale and lower costs but the latest market share data shows the subsidiaries have lost ground to rivals.
The multinational first acquired KenolKobil which it rebranded to Rubis Energy Kenya and later bought Gulf.
“After having succeeded in its takeover offer on KenolKobil in March 2019, Rubis, already active on the fast-growing Kenyan market, would with this acquisition, become leader with a 20 percent market share. Higher volumes in this market would allow, in time, to generate significant economies of scale,” Rubis had said in 2019.
Vivo’s growing control of the local petroleum sales comes on the back of an aggressive expansion strategy that saw the firm open its 250th local station in November last year.
Vivo Energy knocked off TotalEnergies from the pole position three years ago and has been expanding its footprint across the country with stations that house financial, health and fast food outlets. jmutua@ke.nationmedia.com