The New Elgin Service Station will reopen to customers this week after a huge £500,000 makeover.
Extensive renovation work has been taking place for the last four weeks on the petrol station.
New improvements include two huge 800-squarefoot walk-in “caves” to cool soft drinks and alcohol for warm summer days.
Meanwhile, a kitchen has been fitted to prepare hot and cold takeaway food for customers heading out on the road.
Since buying the New Elgin Service Station in 2021, owner Arul Palaniappan has driven petrol prices down to the lowest in town to drive footfall into the shop.
After the site and its sister store in Bishopmill were put up for sale the businessman seized the opportunity to relocate his family from the Newcastle area.
Now he believes the petrol station is ready to reach its full potential as a new Premier store.
Why now for New Elgin Service Station refurbishment?
Mr Palaniappan first visited Elgin on a family holiday before jumping at the chance for a foothold in the market when the previous business was put up for sale.
After a “cosmetic” refurbishment at Bishopmill in 2021, the work in New Elgin was delayed for something more ambitious.
The team is now preparing to open the doors on the new-look petrol station on Friday.
Mr Palaniappan said: “We saw a huge potential with these sites, they are ideal for us because there are so many houses around them.
“This has been a much bigger job in New Elgin, because we’ve taken it right back. It’s almost completely new.
“The beer cave and soft drinks cave are the only ones of their kind in Moray. There is one in the Lesmurdie shop but it is a lot smaller, just a cupboard really.
“You can’t get anything like them in the supermarkets with two-litre bottles or cases of beers already chilled, so we think they will be very popular.
“We have the kitchen now too. People want food ready to go, warm and cold, so it’s something we wanted to add.”
How New Elgin Service Station started petrol prices war
When Mr Palaniappan bought the New Elgin Service Station in 2021, he immediately lowered the petrol prices to be the cheapest in town.
The result was a new wave of customers that packed the forecourt and the aisles in the shop.
Last year he dropped them even further by making the prices at the pump end .6p per litre, instead of the traditional .9p per litre – solely to undercut Asda at Edgar Road.
Mr Palaniappan said: “I want to be the cheapest petrol. We don’t make much margin on it so we use it to get customers in the shop where the margins are bigger for us and still good deals for shoppers.
“I was still getting people saying ‘No, Asda is cheaper.’ It was .9p per litre to .7p per litre. Come on, it’s not that much difference, but I could tell it mattered to people.
“So we dropped it to .6p per litre, just to make sure we are still the cheapest.
“When we first visited Elgin I could tell the petrol here was very expensive, much more than Newcastle.
“When we took them over I could see there was no reason for it to be that high so we lowered them.
“And do you know what, everyone followed us. Not straight away, it took maybe three months, but everyone came down to match us.”
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