Viva Plans 100 Servos With No Staff. Warrnambool and Hamilton Are Next

From Wednesday 25 November, the shop at the Shell Reddy Express Ponderosa on Raglan Parade in Warrnambool shuts. When the site reopens in mid December, the bowsers will run around the clock and nobody will be behind the counter. The Reddy Express in Hamilton follows from 2 December.

"Regrettably there will be some redundancies as a result of this change," a Viva Energy spokesperson told Warrnambool's The Standard. A day earlier, Viva had told the share market those two towns are part of something much bigger.

A hundred servos with nobody home

At its investor day on Monday 9 November, Viva put a number on it. About 100 of its company run sites are earmarked for what it calls the "unattended format", subject to regulatory approval. That includes the 25 to 30 conversions it had already flagged for this year.

Viva runs 978 fuel and convenience sites: 621 Express sites (the old Coles Express network, now Reddy Express), 254 OTR stores and 103 Liberty Convenience sites, as at 30 September. Its presentation sorts the network into three groups. About 500 "prime" sites average 6 million litres of fuel and $2.3 million of shop sales a year. About 300 "core" sites do 2.7 million litres and $1.1 million. Then there's a tail of roughly 100 fuel led sites averaging 1.5 million litres and just $600,000 through the shop.

When you break it down, $600,000 a year is about $11,500 a week, before Viva pays for a single chocolate bar or carton of milk. Its slides put the average labour saving from going unattended at about $200,000 a store, before tax. Converting a site costs $300,000 to $350,000, and Viva expects to earn that back in one to two years.

The early evidence is thin, and Viva says so. It rests on three conversions, all less than three months old, and a footnote warns they "are not necessarily representative of the wider rollout". Even so, Viva reports fuel volumes rose "well above levels achieved prior to conversion", with the headline figure on the slide a volume uplift of more than four times.

Part of that is simple opening hours. The Standard reports the Warrnambool site is moving from limited hours to 24 hour fuel. A servo that sells petrol at 2am will sell more than one that shuts after tea.

Ampol got there first

None of this is new to Ampol. It launched U-GO in 2023: unstaffed, pay at the pump, no shop. By March it had 46 U-GO sites, according to the ACCC's preliminary assessment of Ampol's takeover of EG Australia, and Ampol said it would convert 125 EG sites to the format over two years. That puts it close to 200 U-GO sites within two to three years.

Across the Tasman the model is already mainstream. In July, Gull and NPD, described by Mergermarket as New Zealand's two largest chains of unmanned petrol stations, announced plans to combine into a business of about 240 sites with close to a fifth of the market.

So does unattended mean cheaper fuel? Petrolmate took the latest unleaded price at 44 U-GO sites, as reported to the state government fuel price schemes as of this morning, and compared each one with every other servo within 5 kilometres. Forty two of the 44 were below the local median, by an average of 5.6 cents a litre. Twenty seven were the cheapest in their 5 kilometre circle, or equal cheapest.

The widest gap was at Sebastopol near Ballarat, where the U-GO site sat at 209.9 cents against a local median of 228.4. In Coburg the U-GO was 211.5 against a local median of 224.9. Only the U-GO sites at Ararat (229.5 against 228.3) and Toowoomba Central (233.9 against 229.9) were dearer than the servos around them. It's one snapshot rather than a long term study, but the pattern held in all four states with enough data: NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

The cash rule most drivers haven't heard of

Here's the part that gets far less attention. Since 1 January, large fuel retailers have had to accept cash for in person purchases of $500 or less between 7am and 9pm, and the ACCC has been able to seek penalties since 1 July. Sites that don't routinely sell unleaded, typically regional diesel stops, are carved out. An unstaffed servo that sells unleaded and won't take cash during those hours needs an exemption from the ACCC.

Ampol has two for U-GO. The ACCC's register shows a five year exemption from 24 June covering 46 existing sites and four future ones, and another from 30 September covering 23 more across NSW, Queensland and Victoria. The pro cash group Cash Welcome criticised the decision when it surfaced in June, arguing that a big company selling an essential product has no good reason to turn away notes.

Viva's slides don't say which regulatory approval they're waiting on. Its Viva Energy Retail and On the Run entries on the register, both dated 8 October, cover EV chargers at 11 sites in NSW and South Australia, not unattended fuel. Meanwhile a Shell Reddy Express in Mount Gambier stopped offering staffed service on 29 September, and The Standard reports two Geelong sites were confirmed last month as Shell Express unattended outlets. How Viva will handle cash at its unstaffed sites hasn't been made public.

The practical upshot at the bowser

For now, the Warrnambool and Hamilton changes aren't about price. This morning both sites listed unleaded at 229.7 on Victoria's official fuel price data. The Ponderosa site at 229.7 is 0.8 cents dearer than the APCO just up Raglan Parade at 228.9, and 2.2 cents below the dearest servo in town at 231.9. The Hamilton site at 229.7 is level with OTR Hamilton at 229.7 for the cheapest unleaded in town.

Whether those boards drop once the staff go is up to Viva. Its slide lists "competitive fuel" among the things unattended customers get, but stops short of a promise. Ampol's numbers show a fuel only site can be priced sharply. They don't prove every one will be.

The other changes are easier to predict. No shop means no pie, no milk and no coffee, though The Standard reports some converted stores may keep vending machines. Anyone who relies on a staff member to help them refuel, or who pays with notes, should plan around it.

From 20,000 servos to a card reader

To put this in perspective, Australia had about 20,000 servos in 1970. By 1980 it was 12,500 and by 2000 about 8,000, according to the Motor Trades Association of Queensland's submission to the ACCC's 2007 petrol inquiry. Knight Frank put the count near 6,400 in 2017.

The squeeze hasn't let up. Viva's presentation, citing government petroleum statistics, shows retail petrol volumes falling 1.7 per cent a year since 2015 as cars get more efficient and electric vehicles arrive, while diesel grows 2.6 per cent a year. Industry retail fuel margins have crept from about 13 cents a litre to about 18 over the same stretch, Viva says, largely to cover higher operating costs. Its answer splits the network in two: about 250 prime sites earmarked for conversion to OTR, 40 to 50 new OTR stores, and a tail of fuel only sites with nobody inside.

The servo of the next decade looks like either a café with bowsers out front or a bowser with a card reader. Fair to say the one in between is the one disappearing.

Worth keeping in mind