Glow Petroleum sets up $340,000 Bulawayo shop

GLOW Petroleum has invested about $340,000 in its first service station in Bulawayo with plans to invest up to $5 million in the city by February next year.

The outlet, which is located along Khami Road, is the company's 37th in the country. Speaking at the launch ceremony on Friday, Glow Petroleum managing director Mr Aaron Chinhara said they are happy to consolidate their presence in Matabeleland region.

"This service station here today is our 37th outlet in the country and we're coming to Bulawayo to consolidate our presence in Matabeleland region. We penetrated Matabeleland region through Gwanda, where we've built a state-of-the art shopping mall, which also includes a service station," he said.

Mr Chinhara said the site where the new service station has been set up belongs to Gold Star Refinery and the premises have been secured through his business partner Mr Tawanda Ruzive under a five-year lease agreement.

The new outlet employs about 15 people. "Our recruitment policy as an organisation is centred on recruiting locally. In all the areas that we have operations we recruit the locals," he said.

In an interview later, he said: "We invested about $340,000 to set up the infrastructure at this service station and we didn't put much into this project because we're operating under a five year lease agreement.

"We believe we would have recouped the profits from the investment within the five year period."

Earlier on in his address, Mr Chinhara said they have already bought the land for their next project, a state-of-the-art service station in Bulawayo's Central Business District.

"We've bought land in Bulawayo where we're also going to build a service station, which we believe would be the mother of all service stations. At that site we're also going to compete with other companies in the fuel industry," he said, adding that his organisation was seeing opportunities at a time when Bulawayo and the region at large is seen as dying in terms of investment.

However, Mr Chinhara blasted the Bulawayo City Council for being slow when dealing with potential investors. "We could have opened this site about three weeks ago but this couldn't be so because of some delays by some BCC employees to sort out some documentation. We're saying by the moment BCC acts like that, investors get frustrated.

"As an organisation, even if we get frustrated by the city council, we're not going to give anyone anything to get favours from the local authority because we highly value Christian values," he said.

Glow Petroleum is an indigenous company with branches in areas such as Harare, Kadoma, Hwange, Rusape, Chiredzi and Triangle.