Inland Petroleum

Inland Petroleum is the BP distributor for western and north western New South Wales marketing BP Fuels and Lubricants.
Inland Petroleum is a new name for two businesses that operated in western and north western New South Wales since 1985. Formerly Mahers Petroleum, Gunnedah and Fosters Petroleum, Dubbo. The stimulus for change was the restructuring of ownership of the organization under the common sole proprietorship of Paul McCallum.

Choosing the name Inland Petroleum
It was felt firstly a geographical or name based on one person was inappropriate in a business that was spread over a diverse rural area. With 65 people contributing to the success of the business certainly naming the business after one person was inappropriate. A further thought was that many country fuel distributorships are coming under direct control of the oil majors and basing administrations and direction from the capital city base. By naming the business Inland Petroleum it reinforced that the business was rurally based and focused.

Responding to Changes in the Petroleum Industry
The new millennium has brought challenges to the country petroleum industry. The four majors have or are in the process of buying back and therefore regaining direct control of franchised distributorships in an attempt to control directly, pricing and costs of operation. The cost base which the industry operates under has been relentlessly increasing and new environmental and statutory requirements will continue to see it increase still further in the future.

In contrast to this, wholesale and retail margins have been driven downwards by the emergence in the last five years of strong retail based independents who whilst focusing on the retail area generally drive down prices to all sectors of the market. Further pressure is brought to bear handling a product that has price volatility and in the last few years has increased in value in real terms. This brings pressure in funding working capital in any business.

Expansion of our distributorship has been both horizontally and vertically. We have moved from supplying retail service stations to both being the supplier and the operator of a number of sites. In the larger rural centers the closing of smaller inefficient sites had facilitated growth of larger convenience store type service stations. The future of petroleum retailing in rural areas would almost certainly be a strong reliance on shop turnover for the greater percentage of store revenue.

Whilst company controlled distributorships are removing themselves from the rural bulk market because of a number of factors, we see ourselves as focusing and expanding our service to this sector of the market.