TAYLOR, Mich. -- Atlas Oil Co. has acquired the five Battle Creek, Mich.-area gas station-convenience stores of R & J Inc. and has folded that company into its own retail segment, according to Crain's Detroit Business.
"We previously had three stations on the western side of Michigan, and this expands our presence in a market where we have already wanted to grow," Michael Evans, executive vice president for business development at Atlas, told Crain's. "We had one of our stations that was fairly close to theirs. The others are elsewhere in the state [image-nocss] and not in competition."
Terms of the deal, finalized on Monday, were not disclosed. As reported yesterday in a CSP Daily News Flash, the transaction buys out the ownership stake of R & J partners Richard Folk and John Reed, and all remaining employees at the five stations in western Michigan's Calhoun County become Atlas employees effective immediately.
All five CITGO stations, which earned a combined $20 million in revenue last year, will rebrand to BP stations within 30 days as a part of the transaction, said the report.
The company also recently rebranded two other locations in Dexter and Chelsea, Mich., just west of Ann Arbor, to BP as part of a new branding agreement with BP. Through this agreement, Atlas Oil has begun branding BP convenience gas centers throughout Michigan and Indiana.
"We are confident that our team will help facilitate growth of the BP brand while adding to our existing brand deck that includes Clark, CITGO, Marathon, Phillips, Fast Track and WOW," said Sam Simon, president and CEO of Atlas Oil, when the deal was announced in December.
Atlas, a unit of Simon Holdings, currently owns 40 gas stations and is the chief gasoline supplier to more than 300 retail outlets in 10 states, as well as being a regional ground fuels supplier to FedEx Corp. and several trucking companies.
The company is also the franchisor of Fast Track, its own retail brand of gas stations in the Midwest. Fast Track Ventures purchases stations, office buildings and vacant land and resells those parcels. It works with Atlas Oil to purchase the stations and resell them, allowing Atlas to secure long-term supply contracts.
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