Ampol provides update at Annual General Meeting

Ampol held its Annual General Meeting on Friday (12 May), with CEO and Managing Director Matt Halliday providing an update.

“I am proud that in 2022 strong ongoing operational performance has allowed us to deliver exceptional outcomes for shareholders, customers, and communities as we continued to successfully execute our strategy,” he said. “The core business delivered a record financial result, which supported record shareholder returns.

“These outcomes wouldn’t have been possible without the dedication of the entire Ampol team, who have responded well to the significant challenges of global energy markets’ volatility, extreme weather events and Covid-19 outbreaks to continue to deliver safely, reliably and efficiently for our customers.”

Mr Halliday noted that convenience retail delivered “very strong” financial performance through improved earnings in both fuel and shop, despite the impact of high fuel prices during the year.

On Ampol’s operational and strategic priorities, Mr Halliday said the rebrand to Ampol is now complete, with the milestone reached in just under two years.

“Our customers, stakeholders and employees have responded very positively to the return of Ampol as an iconic brand Australians know and love,” he said.

“We also achieved our non-fuel RCOP EBIT uplift target in our convenience retail business ahead of schedule.”

In May 2022, Ampol also completed the acquisition of Z Energy in New Zealand.

Sustainability

Ampol saw several important milestones in sustainability during 2022, said Mr Halliday.

“Highlights include the development of in-house modelling capabilities to model the impact of various climate change scenarios on the transport sector, along with delivering a physical climate risk assessment to understand the potential impacts of changing weather conditions on our assets and infrastructure,” he said.

“From a reporting, strategy and governance perspective, we integrated our Sustainability Report into our Annual Reporting suite in 2022, a move which underlines our commitment to transparency and to ongoing improvement across our key sustainability measures.

“I was also pleased to recently launch our refreshed sustainability strategy, which outlines our key areas of focus and details our plans to meet our 2025 sustainability targets.”

Ampol continued to invest in its energy transition in 2022, too.

“The Future Energy team achieved several significant milestones over the last year, including launching AmpCharge, our electric vehicle charging solution, and the installation of the first five pilot sites as part of a co-funding agreement with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency,” Mr Halliday said.

“We also finalised an agreement with the NSW government to deliver 19 fast charging sites and over 110 charging bays in key areas of NSW, including over 50 bays at eight ‘at-destination’ sites outside our retail network.

“In total, our initial commitment is to deliver more than 100 fast-charging sites and over 300 charging bays in Australia as we work collaboratively with governments on co-funding solutions to leverage our infrastructure network strength to deliver e-mobility solutions.”

In further initiatives, Mr Halliday said Ampol made “strong progress” putting community at the heart of its strategy in 2022.

“Overall community contributions in Australia increased by 29% to $4.1 million, which included raising over $1 million for our Ampol Foundation charity partners through our retail network and the generous support of customers,” he said.

“This was complemented by strong employee participation in our workplace giving program, Fuelling Change, with funds raised reaching almost $300,000.

“We also continued to progress our objectives in diversity and inclusion and maintained our strong employee culture as demonstrated in our third consecutive annual culture survey. This included the launch of our second Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan as we continue our journey to support better opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across employment, procurement, cultural awareness and community engagement.”