Mazeikiu Nafta eyes wholesale sales expansion

Nearly 90 percent of the gasoline and 11 percent of the diesel fuel sold in Estonia is from Lithuania's Mazeikiu Nafta oil refinery.

The biggest retailers, including Statoil, Neste and LUKoil, buy their fuel from Mazeikiu, the daily Eesti Paevaleht reported.

Mazeikiu Nafta plans to grow its market shares in Estonia, Latvia and Poland. The firm only sells fuel wholesale.

"We do not have any retail sale plans in Estonia, and I was very much surprised when I heard about this via the Estonian press," said Sarunas Kliokys, development director of the firm.

"Maybe some firm had its shares on sale, but I reiterated that we are only interested in wholesale," he added.

Although Estonian retailers buy their gasoline from Mazeikiu, the firm is not yet satisfied with its market share.

"We are constantly competing with refineries in the neighborhood in Poland, Belarus, Russia, Finland and Norway. In general, the Baltic area is surrounded by very good refineries," Kliokys said.

In order to step up its presence in Estonia's retail and wholesale firms, Mazeikiu Nafta would like to set up a distribution depot in the country. At present such depots exist already in Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania.

"We must set up a distribution depot so our output would always be present in the terminals there. The question is where we will build it. We do not have to immediately buy a terminal, we can start by renting one. We have lots of opportunities," Kliokys said. The Estonian unit should launch operations in May, but before that a local manager would have to be found.