Shahins' OTR service station/stores brand set to go national in Viva Energy deal with HQ to stay in Adelaide
Viva Energy was attracted by the Shahin family's OTR concept of combining convenience stores, plus fast food, with its service stations.
Adelaide’s OTR (On the Run) chain of convenience stores and petrol stations was set to become a national brand across 700 sites in a $1.15 billion deal by Viva Energy with the Shahin family’s Peregrine Corporation in 2023.
Under the deal, Viva Energy, owner of Geelong oil refinery and Shell-branded fuels, would take on 205 stores operating under the OTR banner with more than $3 billion worth of revenue a year and employ about 6,500. It would bring OTR's stores and hundreds of Coles Express sites across Australia under the one banner.
OTR founder Yasser Shahin described the deal as more a "merger than a sale", and, if approved, the Shahin family would be one of the biggest shareholders in Viva and that he would stay on to help run it: "A condition of the deal from day one was that Viva agree to keep the business headquartered in Adelaide and they've actually done one better — they've agreed to make Adelaide the headquarters of the entire national Coles Express/OTR retail business, so that's a 13,000-person (7,000 OTR, 6,000 Viva) organisation."
Viva Energy's chief executive Scott Wyatt said the deal would "lift the standard of convenience retailing in this country. As our stores increasingly become retail destinations, we expect convenience earnings will grow and reduce our dependency on traditional fuels. OTR outlets offer an attractive and welcoming store environment, supporting increased dwell time."
Beyond South Australia, OTR already operated in northwest Victoria. As part of the deal, Viva Energy bought decade-long naming rights, likely to be “Shell”, for The Bend Motorsport Park at Tailem Bend, also owned and run by the Shahin family since 2018.
The Peregrine Corporation had its origins with Fred Shahin, an auditor and logistics manager for the United Nations in Lebanon helping Palestinian refugees, who fled war-torn strife for Adelaide in 1984. Answering an advertisement in The Advertiser newspaper, he bought a BP petrol station, and house next door for the family, in the western suburb of Woodville Park. One of his sons, Yasser, later founded On The Run (OTR) brand in 1999 after being frustrated at the slender margins in petrol retailing and deciding the family needed to branch out into selling more convenience goods.
Fred Shahin, a meticulous bookkeeper and strategist, died in 2009 and his sons, Charlie, Yasser and Sam, steadily built Peregrine Corporation that, besides OTR, had big commercial property interests, and the tobacco and giftware retail chains Smokemart and Giftbox.
