New owner: gas station at the entrance to the village changes color

Created: 06/29/2022, 06:53

By: Andreas Höger

The OMV days are numbered: The petrol station at the entrance to Holzkirchner from the direction of Otterfing is about to change brand.

© Stefan Schweihofer

A gas station in Holzkirch is about to change color: OMV was taken over by the EG Group, an independent gas station operator.

Which brand follows is still a company secret.

One can speculate.

A hot candidate wears the colors red and blue.

Holzkirchen

– It has been glowing green and blue at the entrance to Holzkirchen for over 20 years.

OMV, an international oil, gas and chemical company based in Vienna, operates a filling station with a shop and washing modules here, in a prime location next to the state road (formerly B 13).

But that will soon be the end of it.

As early as December 2020, OMV announced that it would sell the petrol station business in Germany – 285 stations in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg – to the British EG Group for EUR 485 million.

The buyer is not a petroleum company, but a powerful retailer that not only operates gas stations in Europe, the USA and Australia, but also fast food outlets.

The EG-Group entered the German business four years ago.

At that time, the company bought 957 Esso filling stations from Exxon and let them continue to operate under the established Esso brand name.

Further acquisitions followed in the past year.

The English group now also owns a number of Shell and Total gas stations.

OMV grants a transitional period

The emerging market power of the EG-Group called the Federal Cartel Office into action in the run-up to the OMV acquisition.

The competition watchdogs feared that the large corporations BP/Aral, Shell and the EG Group would become too dominant in the market in southern Germany.

That is why they attached a condition to their approval of the OMV purchase: the EG Group had to cede 24 OMV and Esso stations to a smaller competitor in selected areas, including the greater Munich area.

Avia was awarded the contract for the 48 locations.

This allowed the OMV deal to go through.

"The filling stations have belonged to the EG Group since May 1," says Thomas Bauer, spokesman for OMV.

After deducting the 24 stations transferred to Avia, there are now 261 OMV filling stations in southern Germany faced with the question: Which brand will the new owner allocate to us?

As OMV spokesman Bauer explains, a transitional period has been agreed.

"The buyer gets time to complete the brand change," explains Bauer, "so the OMV brand will still be visible for a while." The spokesman did not want to comment on exactly how long.

The lessee of Holzkirchner OMV does not want to say much about the upcoming brand change either.

"We hardly get any information and can't give any out yet," says Stefan Kaiser, who runs the OMV filling stations in Holzkirchen and Geretsried;

you just have to wait.

also read

Forest owner warns: Firewood is becoming scarce and increasingly expensive - "if the Russians turn off the gas tap completely..."

Holzkirchen: Private high school students thank teachers for their Abitur with a hug

It is unlikely that OMV Holzkirchen will belong to the small Avia package, since Avia is already present just a few kilometers further in the neighboring town of Otterfing.

There is much more to suggest that the EG Group relies on its main brand, Esso.

Esso is represented in Miesbach and Rottach-Egern, but not yet in the northern district of Miesbach.

The color of the Holzkirchner town entrance could soon change from green and blue to red and blue.

By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Holzkirchen newsletter.