John and Jo White travel from as far as Longwarry to fill up their tanks with petrol at the cheap Narre Warren- Cranbourne Road APCO service station.
By Kelly Yates
A CRANBOURNE petrol station has been ranked one of Melbourne’s cheapest petrol outlets.
The low prices were highlighted in a Herald Sun article, showing that four of Casey’s petrol stations were ranked in Melbourne’s top 10 most affordable petrol stations.
The Narre Warren-Cranbourne Road APCO petrol station was ranked third.
Cranbourne’s Mobil petrol station on the South Gippsland Highway was ranked fourth followed by Cranbourne’s Caltex on Hallam Road and the Hampton Park Caltex.
However, APCO is bucking the trend of increasing its petrol prices on Wednesdays, like neighbouring petrol stations.
Instead, it increases its petrol prices every Thursday morning.
APCO director Peter Anderson said he was thrilled that APCO was ranked third.
He said he regularly monitored the price of petrol in Cranbourne because of the large amount of independent petrol stations in the area.
“We drop our price lower than our competitors to attract more customers,” he said.
“But we are losing money on every litre of fuel that is sold per week. Sometimes, we don’t make any money because we are selling below operating costs.”
Mr Anderson said APCO was lobbying the government to withdraw the tax on fuel.
He said the tax was currently 38 cents plus GST.
“The only way fuel prices will come down is if the government removes the 38-cent tax,” Mr Anderson said.
Customers come from far and wide to fill up their tanks at the Cranbourne petrol station.
Longwarry’s John and Jo White said they always found APCO to be the cheapest petrol station.
Manager of the Cranbourne APCO petrol station Jasmina said she had noticed a decrease in the amount of customers purchasing drinks, confectionary and magazines.
“Many people are just sticking to purchasing the petrol.
“You can tell people are struggling because some spend only $5 or $10 on petrol,” she said.
“We understand that people are finding it hard so we try and keep the prices down.”
Mr Anderson expressed his frustration at the government’s intended fuel-watch scheme.
“It’s a waste of $20 million,” he said.
He said that many independent petrol stations would disappear once fuel watch was introduced.
