Unipet on Wednes­day opened its 25th ser­vice sta­tion in the coun­try, and in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture more of its ser­vice sta­tions will be pow­ered by so­lar en­er­gy and be able to ac­com­mo­date elec­tric ve­hi­cles, says its Chair­man Dr Afraz Ali.

Speak­ing at the open­ing of the gas sta­tion, which is lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Ram­goolie Street, South­ern Main Road in Curepe, Ali said while fos­sil fu­el will be Unipet’s main busi­ness dri­ver for the fore­see­able fu­ture, it rec­og­nizes the im­por­tance of re­duc­ing its car­bon foot­print and has be­gun to fo­cus on re­new­able en­er­gy.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he al­so not­ed that tech­nol­o­gy can help the busi­ness be of ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly to those who strug­gle to be for­mal­ly in­volved in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

“We en­vi­sion a sys­tem that will be avail­able for oth­er con­sumer items be­yond fu­el. We en­vi­sion that for the first time in our coun­try there will be a sys­tem which pro­vides the un­banked with a way of record­ing their trans­ac­tions.

“The sys­tem will al­so re­duce some of the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with hav­ing cash and there­fore be more ef­fi­cient for all of stake­hold­ers,” Ali ex­plained.

Unipet’s CEO Dex­ter Ri­ley said the open­ing rep­re­s­ened its sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Chat­ter­goon fam­i­ly, as about two years ago the first Chat­ter­goon sta­tion was opened in Ari­ma.

Ri­ley said Unipet is com­mit­ted to col­lab­o­rat­ing to im­prove the sup­ply of pe­tro­le­um to peo­ple who tra­verse the east/west cor­ri­dor and to en­sure they can ac­cess clean and at­trac­tive fa­cil­i­ties.

“This open­ing is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the ex­treme­ly pos­i­tive out­comes which can be de­rived when we col­lab­o­rate to­wards a com­mon goal,” he added.

He said one of the com­pa­ny’s short-term goals is to re­boot its brand ex­pe­ri­ence in the net­work, not­ing that cus­tomers who use the ser­vice sta­tion would have a new ex­pe­ri­ence that is cus­tomer fo­cused and in­tense­ly con­cen­trat­ed on safe­ty and con­ve­nience.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ri­ley said like oth­er sta­tions in the Unipet net­work, it is tran­si­tion­ing to cash­less trans­ac­tions which will al­so en­hance cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence.

On the in­vest­ments in­to the ser­vice sta­tion, Reval Chat­ter­goon, leader of the Chat­ter­goon busi­ness en­ter­prise, said, “If one were to look at the in­vest­ments I put in­to this gas sta­tion, one can de­ter­mine that it is not a tem­po­rary one. It is not a lease arrange­ment or a job.

“This is per­ma­nent. Think of it as an in­vest­ment in the lega­cy that will be left be­hind and be passed on from one gen­er­a­tion to an­oth­er. See the in­vest­ment in this sta­tion as an in­vest­ment in the com­mu­ni­ty and with the aim con­tin­u­ing to build this com­mu­ni­ty.”