Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd will begin retail marketing of petrol and diesel during 2015-16. H Kumar, Managing Director of MRPL, told BusinessLine that the company will make its retail foray during 2015-16.

Deregulation effect

“Plans for 2015-16 are to start around 120 outlets. Out of which, around 60 per cent may actually come on the ground and start functioning. Predominantly we are looking something like that,” he said.

The deregulation of the pricing of diesel has made the company to plan for the retail marketing of products.

It may be mentioned here that the company had made its entry into retail marketing in January 2008 with the opening of an outlet under the brand name ‘HiQ’ at Maddur in Mandya district of Karnataka. After that it had opened another outlet at Hubli in Karnataka.

Though the company had then stated that it had approval from the Centre to set up 500 retail outlets across the country, it had put the decision to roll out retail outlets on hold due to under recoveries in retail marketing.

Apart from the approval for 500 outlets, the company is also likely to get licence to open another 1,500 from ONGC.

Nod for 1,500 outlets

Addressing presspersons in Mangaluru after the annual general meeting in September 2014, DK Saraff, Chairman of ONGC and MRPL, had stated that the downstream business would be done through ONGC’s subsidiary — MRPL. He had then ruled out ONGC entering retail marketing. ONGC has the approval for around 1,500 retail outlets.

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