Europe's Applegreen expands in the Mid West of the USA

Applegreen PLC on Wednesday said it agreed to buy a leasehold interest in some forecourt retail assets of Lehigh Gas Wholesale LLC and CrossAmerica Partners LP, located in the US states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The filling stations operator said it will enter into an initial ten-year agreement with Lehigh Gas and CrossAmerica to lease the property assets and commence trade at the service stations.

Completion of the transaction is subject to a number of conditions, Applegreen noted, and, pending satisfaction of those conditions, is expected to complete in the third quarter of 2019.

Applegreen did not provide any financial details of the deal, but said no up-front consideration is required to be paid and the transaction is expected to be earnings accretive in 2019.

The assets comprise a total of 46 petrol filling stations which currently include convenience store operations. Applegreen expects these operations to be managed by its existing management team based in the northeast US.

"Following significant acquisitions on the east coast of the US in the past two years, we are delighted to announce our first major acquisition in the midwest," said Chief Executive Bob Etchingham.

"We believe that this acquisition represents an opportunity to establish a significant presence in another market in the US while leveraging our existing management and operational capabilities," added Etchingham.