Lochaline Filling Station

Morvern Community Trading Company (MCTC) is the trading arm of MCDC. MCTC took over the running of the Lochaline Filling Station in 2015 on behalf of the community. MCDC looked at the best way to make Lochaline Filling Station viable while providing a vital service to the community.

The solution was to install a fully automated pump and 24/7 payment system. Customers are able to fuel up using their bank cards or with local account cards which are issued by MCTC to local account holders upon request. This system was installed in June 2015 with the invaluable support from HIE, the local Morvern Community Trust and a considerable contribution from Morvern Community Development Company, MCTC’s parent company.

MCDC are now replacing the old pumps with a newer system that should work seamlessly with the automatic payment terminal. The installation is due to complete in autumn 2021. However if the broadband is down no fuel can be purchased. Unfortunately the broadband is outwith MCTC’s control.

MCTC is trying to keep the price of the fuel as low as possible for the local community. We change the price of the fuel when we have a delivery so that we can pass on any increase or decrease in the cost of the fuel to us.

The costs of running the petrol pumps are significant and we do not sell a huge amount of fuel so the cost of the fuel is higher than say a supermarket can buy it at. The costs include insurance, rent of site, petrol licence, credit card fees, broadband link, electricity, staff costs for checking fuel tanks, overseeing delivery and complying with all health and safety legislation and accounting to the Trading Standards for all sales.

We need to charge 20p on every litre of fuel sold on top of the purchase price to cover these costs. But as we successfully lobbied the Government to enable Lochaline to qualify for a 5p HMRC fuel rebate we only add 15p on the cost of fuel as we claw back the extra 5p from the government.