Petrogas pumps US expansion

So thrilled is Applegreen/Petrogas with its nascent push into the US, that the forecourts retailer is already looking to expand its network. Bob Etchingham, co-founder of the group, is currently over there scouting sites on the east coast.

The company, which this month announced hundreds of new jobs in an Irish expansion, bought its first two US forecourt sites recently in the curiously-named Long Island towns of Hicksville and Plainview.

Joe Barrett, who founded the business alongside Etchingham, tells me Applegreen will probably open another "two to three" US sites this year, as well as another five in the UK, to take its total there to about 50.

It is also building a number of motorway “super service stations” in Ireland, which should keep it busy on the home front. The group had sales of a hefty €718 million in 2012, the year of its most recent set of available accounts, .

Barrett says the company could invest as much as €100 million expanding its network at home and abroad over the next three years: “We’ll ramp it up over time. It’s not our style to enter markets with a big bang.”

It’s surely never a good thing to have a big bang in the fuel market.