Listed firm Shell Pilipinas Corporation is injecting additional capital for the ‘high grading’ of at least 50 mobility stations yearly that have already gone past their prime due to several decades of operations in servicing customers.

According to Shell Pilipinas Vice President for Mobility Randolph T. Del Valle, their ‘high grading’ investments could range from P300,000 up to P10 million or P20 million per mobility station depending on the scale of refurbishment as well as on the services and offers that shall be added or integrated into that particular retail network.

High grading, in this business context, would refer to the process of improving, not just the aesthetics but more importantly, beefing up or expanding the service-offers at mobility stations as well as ensuring that their operations are safe, secure and environmentally sound.

“We renovate or we do high grading of minimum 50 stations a year – so either we refurbish the station or we add services or product-offers in a station, like we can put up Shell Helix oil change in a mobility station,” Del Valle explained.

And in areas where there would be demand for convenience retail stores like Shell Select or Shell Select Express, “that call also be an added service-offer when we do high grading in our existing mobility stations,” he said.

The required investment for renovation could range from P300,000 or if the station is already very old, the warranted capital outlay for total overhaul could go as high as P20 million ”because that’s like putting up a new station already,” Del Valle noted.

He qualified that in their yearly capital expenditure (capex) allocation, there are at least 40 new mobility stations being programmed for rollout; then on top of that, there are stations lined up for high grading.

“We have steady growth. But it is also very important for us to do high-grading in our stations – we do renovation of existing sites because they could also get worn out, so we need to refresh them because our tanks also have their life span. So we invest in that,” the Shell executive stressed.

He added “we just don’t sell our products, we always make sure also that we adhere to safety, security and we give premium to the environment in our operations.”

Del Valle conveyed that Shell has been constantly tracking and scrutinizing the thickness of the wall of their gas tanks, because that is a tested way for them to avoid leakage in their facilities – given that such incidents could be harmful to the surrounding communities of gasoline stations.

“We monitor and review the thickness of the walls of our tanks, because if these would be punctured, water could seep into our facilities that are installed on the ground; and if that is not managed properly, then water sources in the community could get contaminated, so we have to judiciously avoid that situation,” he emphasized.