ORLEN Says Non-Fuel Revenue Now Matches Fuel Sales, Opens First Unstaffed Store

Non-fuel revenue at ORLEN has already caught up with income from fuel sales, according to Agnieszka Bobrukiewicz, a member of the ORLEN Unipetrol board, and the group has now taken that business off the forecourt entirely with its first automated self-service Stop Cafe store.

The unstaffed outlet sits next to the Praha-Braník railway station in the Czech Republic, beside a park-and-ride car park, and trades 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"We deliberately chose the location near Praha-Braník station," said Rostislav Moravec, director of the ORLEN filling station network in the Czech Republic. "It is a place with a high frequency of people moving through, where our Stop Cafe store will improve local service provision".

Customers enter using the DoKapsy mobile application from the bank ČSOB, which verifies the shopper through bank identity. The app is also available to customers who do not hold a ČSOB account. Entry is by a unique QR code generated in the app, and the shopper must scan the code again on leaving.

The whole sales floor is covered by a camera system, and the store is connected to a central security desk, with a security mode activated automatically each time a customer enters.

Scale explains why the retail arm now carries as much revenue weight as the pumps. ORLEN operates more than 3,500 filling stations across seven central European countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, Austria and Slovakia. Almost 2,500 of those stations across the international network carry the Stop Cafe concept.

In the Czech Republic the format reaches 363 of the 446 ORLEN stations cited by the company. The Czech network is described elsewhere in the same disclosure as 443 filling stations holding a 28.6% share of fuel volumes sold.

Bobrukiewicz, who is responsible for retail in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria and serves as executive director for the non-fuel segment at group level, said sales in the segment have been growing over a long period and that the company now wants to use that potential away from filling stations as well.

The move outside the forecourt is not a first attempt. "We are already successfully developing this concept in Germany, and we will be glad if we are successful with it in the Czech Republic too," Bobrukiewicz said.

The same retail network is where ORLEN sells electricity and hydrogen alongside liquid fuels. It supplies electricity at 294 charging points and runs hydrogen stations at Barrandov in Prague and at Litvínov-Záluží. The Czech network has taken the title of most trustworthy brand six times and the Obchodník roku award three times.

Separately, Butadien Kralupy a.s. announced a planned shutdown of its Butadien II production unit from September 14, 2026, citing a shortage of feedstock.