Background In 1984, Fred Shahin and his family moved to Australia. He bought his first
BP service station in the
Adelaide suburb of
Woodville Park and various other tobacco outlets.
Growth under Shahin family ownership By January 1999, the Shahin family owned and operated four drive-thru standalone convenience stores and thirteen fuel service stations in the Adelaide metropolitan area. The family operated the service stations under the BP brand across South Australia. In 1999, the family began using the
On The Run brand, abbreviated as OTR, becoming the registered proprietor of the business name
On The Run Convenience Store in South Australia on 1 March 1999 and
On The Run in
New South Wales on 15 March 1999. Peregrine initially operated these sites as On the Run sites selling Mobil fuel, until most of them eventually switched to BP fuel as well. In 2014, OTR acquired 25 BP-owned service stations. The store branding in those stations were later also changed to OTR, but continued to sell BP fuel. In 2015, On the Run began rebranding with a new logo using the shorter
OTR brand. Until 2019, most stores are located in South Australia, with one store in
Irymple, Victoria, which opened in 2015. In 2019, OTR began planning expansion into other parts of Victoria and also New South Wales. Expansion into New South Wales did not eventuate until June 2023. Expansion into Victoria eventuated in March and April 2020, with two OTR-branded service stations opening in
Horsham in western Victoria. Within metropolitan
Melbourne, two OTR stores also opened at service stations in
St Kilda and
Alphington in 2022, with the Alphington service station solely branded OTR with two more stores located in Frankston and Moonee Ponds in 2024. Also in 2022, OTR opened its first
Western Australia store in
Roleystone,
Perth, which was co-branded with
Caltex rather than BP. In early 2023, OTR acquired 17
Puma Energy service stations in the
Northern Territory and Western Australia from
Chevron Corporation, which also owns the
Caltex fuel brand; Caltex fuel would be supplied to these stations. In June 2023, the first New South Wales OTR opened at a
Shell-branded station in
Lane Cove.
Sale to Viva Energy In April 2023, Viva Energy, who owned the
Shell and
Liberty Oil brands in Australia, announced it would acquire OTR from Peregrine Corporation for billion. Viva also announced it was planning to transition
Coles Express convenience stores to the OTR brand. The transaction was subject to
Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) and
Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) clearance. The acquisition would also include Peregrine's businesses of
Smokemart and
Giftbox (SMGB) and the remainder of Mogas. The Shahin family would also be a shareholder of Viva Energy. The ACCC cleared the transaction in December 2023, conditional upon Viva Energy disposing of 25 sites in South Australia to
Chevron which happened in February 2024. In exchange, Viva Energy would receive 13 Chevron sites (
Caltex) located in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia. Those Chevron stores have been rebranded as Store 24 as of May 2024. At the time, the acquisition had still not been approved by the FIRB to finalise the acquisition. As a result of the delayed acquisition of OTR, Viva announced in September 2023 that most Coles Express stores would instead be rebranded as
Reddy Express, while others would be rebranded as OTR once the OTR acquisition was completed. In March 2024, it was announced that the company had completed the purchase of OTR.
Viva Energy ownership In November 2024, OTR began accepting Shell Cards at their 184 OTR sites. Around the same time,
Viva Energy commenced rebranding the fuel offer at its OTR outlets across the country by replacing the old BP signage and independent OTR signage with the Shell signage. The previously-announced rebranding of some Coles Express stores to OTR also began by late 2024, with the first site renovations completed in December 2024. == Trade mark legal action against ExxonMobil ==