Deputy CEO John Carey says safety remains top priority
ADNOC Distribution, the fuel distribution arm of Abu Dhabi’s National Oil Company, is ready to roll out a new fuel home delivery service, but will only do so once all safety concerns have been addressed, its deputy CEO has told Zawya.
In March, Zawya reported that the company had begun trials offering home delivery of fuel through a mobile unit to customers, who could pre-order fuel to a GPS location set via mobile phone. The company’s mobile app has an ‘order gasoline’ function, but it is not yet enabled in most areas.
“It's something we're looking at. For 12 months, we've been doing trials around it,” ADNOC Distribution’s deputy CEO John Carey told Zawya during an interview at the company’s headquarters on Tuesday.
“We want to ensure first and foremost the safety, because we do not want to have any concerns on safety and we feel this is a big change in the market. And we want to gauge customer reactions and what they are looking for as well,” he said.
Asked when the service could be rolled out, Carey said: “If it works, we would be ready to do it in 2019. We're ready to do it now from a commercial perspective.”
He also said that although it “makes great sense” from a commercial standpoint, safety remains the primary concern.
“We don't want to put any risk to any customers, either spillages or accidents - and we don't want to put too much more traffic on the road for the sake of it,” Carey said.
“We won't launch it until we're absolutely 100 percent confident that we are doing the right thing from a safety and process perspective. Commercial will be secondary to that.”
ADNOC Distribution, which floated a 10 percent stake on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange in December 2017, has been looking to grow revenues through the introduction of its Flex Fuel offer charging customers for a premium fuelling service, upgrades to its retail offer and through a push into new markets in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
Carey said that it is also “looking at other markets across the GCC, and beyond that”.
He said that it is also looking to expand its lubricants business in international markets, stating that it has several products with approvals from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in areas such as marine engines, for instance.
He said the lubricants business was “very easy to take internationally”, but said that expansion was about finding the right partners.
“We already have got international partners within lubricants. It's how do we expand that. And if there's any inorganic plays in lubricants, we would look at them as well.”
ADNOC Distribution increased net profit by 28 percent year-on-year to 1.68 billion UAE dirhams ($457 million) for the nine months to September 30. Revenue increased by 19 percent to 16.9 billion UAE dirhams in the same period.
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