About bp Southern Africa
bp Southern Africa's business overview
bp has operated in Africa for over 100 years, pursuing a range of interests from oil and gas exploration, crude oil importation and refining to the distribution of leading fuel products delivered through our retail, aviation and Castrol businesses, through bp Ultimate. Our head office is based in Rosebank, Johannesburg and is the central hub for strategy development, management and decision making.
The core bp brands include the multi-award-winning bp Ultimate fuels with ACTIVE technology, Wild Bean Café, Pick n Pay Express and bp Express convenience brands.
1.1 Infrastructure
bp Southern Africa has over 500 branded service stations across South Africa (SA) and a 50% share in one of the largest refineries in Africa, SAPREF, situated in Durban. SAPREF was commissioned in 1967 as a joint venture between bp and Shell and has a 180,000 barrels per day nameplate capacity.
SAPREF also manages the Single Buoy Mooring (SBM) on behalf of the SA petroleum industry. Around 80 to 85% of SA crude oil imports come through the SBM, which is a national key point.
bp Southern Africa has six fuel storage terminals, two 100% owned by bp Southern Africa, two (Alrode and Pretoria) jointly owned with Sasol (50/50), one (Island View) jointly owned with Shell (50/50) and one (Rustenburg) owned by Astron (⅓), bp Southern Africa (⅓) and Engen (⅓). We invest in our terminal infrastructure to provide world-class road and rail gantries, fire-fighting capability, tanks and pipelines.
1.2 Award-winning fuels and lubricants
The award-winning bp Ultimate with ACTIVE Technology is bp Southern Africa’s flagship fuel product. Its engine performance-enhancing properties have earned it several prestigious accolades including the South African Product of the Year Award and the Ask Afrika Kasi Star Brands survey.
bp’s lubricant brand, Castrol is the world’s leading manufacturer and distributor of premium lubricating oils and related services to automotive and industrial customers across South Africa. Castrol works with leading industry car manufacturers, supplying a broad range of lubricants designed for particular operating conditions and environments.
1.3 Fuel quality assurance & innovation
bp Southern Africa's cutting-edge Advanced Technology Products Centre in Kyalami, Johannesburg (one of only four in the world belonging to bp and the first in Africa) further boosts the company’s ability to provide quality differentiated fuels in the South African market. The Technology Centre laboratory is ISO 17025 accredited, with over 40 years of experience amongst the team of 12 people.
1.4 Award-winning convenience offers
In addition to its over 500 retail stations, which include company-owned, company-leased, and dealer-owned sites, bp Southern Africa provides a unique convenience offering through bp Express, Pick n Pay Express and Wild Bean Café.
1.5 Loyalty and partnerships
Our strategic partnerships with leading brands including Pick n Pay, Nedbank, Uber, Mr Delivery (Mr D), Vodacom, and Discovery Insure have enhanced our customer value proposition, increasing foot traffic to our service stations. Through these shared value partnerships, customers enjoy benefits in the form of loyalty points and rewards.
1.6 bp Marine
bp Marine’s South Africa operations use two barges (small in-port tankers taking fuels from shore tank and delivering to a customer ship) operating companies in Durban, which are both BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) Level 2 companies with Women and Youth among shareholders. These deliver about 35 kilotons per month (ktpm) of bp fuels between them. In Richards Bay, bp uses two barges which are both operated by a single BEE Level 2 company and these deliver about 20 ktpm of bp fuel. bp Marine also delivers Marine diesel by trucks in the ports of Durban and Cape Town through BEE Level 2 entities for such road freighting, delivering 3 ktpm of marine fuels.
2 bp Southern Africa's economic contribution
2.1 Investment in South Africa
As safety is our top priority with investments in systems and infrastructure to ensure safe, reliable and compliant operations.
Furthermore, our investment plan creates employment opportunities and drives economic growth in the country. It is also important to note that the investment plan is aligned with bp Southern Africa’s objectives of sustainable skills development and meaningful broad-based economic transformation. In addition, bp Southern Africa contributes significantly through direct and indirect taxes to the South African Revenue Services (SARS).
We are committed to clean fuels and we have made investments in SAPREF to locally produce 50 ppm Diesel (D50) as well as Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil (VLSFO).
2.2 Corporate Social Investment (CSI)
bp is committed to investing in the communities where we operate and believe in these communities meaningfully. This has led to a firm understanding of local needs to support the sustainability of local communities. The overall aim is to achieve sustainable socio-economic development for all beneficiaries with the belief that this will positively impact the business itself.
2.3 COVID-19 support
During 2020, bp Southern Africa supported several COVID-19 initiatives, including:
- Providing support to the South African President’s Solidarity fund by donating: Jet fuel to South African Airways (SAA) transport and personal protective equipment (PPE) to help health workers fight the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020.
- Partnering with the Gift of the Givers Foundation to set up a mobile testing unit, procuring test kits and protective equipment for health officials conducting the tests in the Eastern Cape.
- Providing complimentary coffee to COVID-19 uniformed frontline personnel including armed forces, South African Police Service (SAPS) and Emergency Medical Services throughout the lockdown period.
3 bp Southern Africa's employment equity
bp Southern Africa employs about 1,000 people from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds in its offices and depots.
bp Southern Africa’s staff is comprised of 45% Women and 55% Male, 64% are African, 19% Coloured, 9% White and 8% Indian. At the executive level 72% are Black and 27% White with strong female representation at 45%.
The appointment of Ms Taelo Mojapelo as bp Southern Africa CEO in June 2020 underscores bp’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Taelo is the second African woman in the history of SA’s oil and gas industry to head a multi-national company and takes over from Ms Priscillah Mabelane, who was the industry first in 2017, moving to Sasol in September 2020.
4 Transformation and empowerment
bp Southern Africa believes in meaningful and sustainable transformation. Its transformation journey has focused on four key areas:
- Transforming the retail dealer network.
- Transforming black ownership of bp Southern Africa.
- Transforming the bp Southern Africa workforce.
- Enterprise and supplier development.
- The transition of selected infrastructure and operations to black people in a sustainable manner.
bp Southern Africa is 25% + 1 black owned where bp plc owns 75% - 1 share, Kapela owns 20%+1 share and bp Southern Africa Energy Mobility Education Trust 5%.
- Kapela is a consortium that includes the Disability Empowerment Concerns Trust (DECT). DECT is a broad-based trust with over 2 million people with disabilities as beneficiaries of which 85% are black and 50% are women as well as a majority black-owned and managed private equity firm.
- The Energy Mobility Education Trust is integrally involved in supporting the development of skills in the critical disciplines of Science, Technology, English and Mathematics (STEM), while developing a pipeline for universities, through a successful partnership with the Wits University Targeting Talent Programme which is focused on black students from rural areas of South Africa.
bp Southern Africa has achieved BEE Level 2 since the promulgation of the B-BBEE (Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment) Codes of Good Practice in 2015 for four consecutive years (2015 to 2018) and achieved level 3 in 2019.
5 Sustainability in bp Southern Africa
Safety is bp Southern Africa’s top priority on every job, every day. bp Southern Africa focuses on keeping employees and contractors safe and alert to potential hazards in their work. Our values determine how it works and no value is more important than safety. We track our safety performance using industry metrics and work to continuously improve personal and process safety across the bp Group.
On the environment, our goal is to understand and sustain the health of the environments in which we operate and respect the resource needs of communities which depend on them. At a local level, we conduct detailed environmental and social assessments when planning our projects to identify impacts that could arise from our activities. We then take measures to address them.
We are committed to conducting our business in an ethical, transparent way, in line with our values and code of conduct. We expect our employees to treat others with respect, fairness and dignity. Our code of conduct sets clear expectations for how we work at bp. It applies to all employees and members of the board. We also expect our contractors and their employees to act in a way that is consistent with our code. If those expectations are not met, we take appropriate action.
