The Fuels & Feedstock business segment refines crude oil and other feedstocks. Its activities include Refining, Supply and Trading, Commercial, and Retail. OMV owns a total refining capacity of around 500 kbbl/d, with three wholly owned refineries in Europe and a 15% share in ADNOC Refining & ADNOC Global Trading. In Europe, refining activities are highly integrated with marketing to serve a strong branded retail network and a broad base of commercial customers. Total fuels and other sales volumes in Europe amounted to 16.21 mn t in 2024. The strongly branded retail network comprising 1,702 filling stations accounted for around 34% of sales volumes, while commercial customers were mainly from the industrial transportation and construction sectors and accounted for the remaining sales volumes.
Refining Including Product Supply and Sales
The OMV refining indicator margin dropped to the pre-pandemic range by the second half of 2024, as road fuel crack spreads moderated. Middle distillate crack spreads were pressured by headwinds from weaker macroeconomic environments, especially in Europe, weighing on demand. Additionally, easing freight rates made imports from East of Suez and the US more profitable, putting pressure on the European markets from the supply side as well. Gasoline crack spreads eased significantly starting in the second half of the year as driving season failed to meet expectations, while the Dangote refinery ramp-up in Nigeria put additional weight on market sentiment from the supply side.
OMV’s European refineries achieved a utilization rate of 87% in 2024, which was heavily impacted by maintenance activities in the Schwechat refinery and an unplanned crude distillation outage in the Burghausen refinery in the middle of August. Despite this challenging economic and operational environment, OMV provided a reliable supply to their B2B customers and achieved excellent business results with high commercial sales in 2024. In response to active market developments and prospecting, OMV has expanded its commercial products and services offer, driving transformation with value-added and more sustainable solutions.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) remains a pillar of OMV’s Strategy 2030 and a key driver for new transformative partnerships across the entire aviation value chain. For instance, OMV and Airbus signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in December 2024 to advance the decarbonization of the aviation industry through SAF. OMV supplies major airlines with SAF made from used cooking oil and has sold over 3,000 t of SAF through certificates to corporate customers, helping them reduce emissions from business travel and the transportation of goods. OMV maintains a strong focus on decarbonization both in the air and on the road. In 2024, the Company significantly increased sales of HVO100 diesel in the Commercial Road Transportation segment and launched a pilot for heavy-duty EV depots. OMV is also advancing sustainability in the marine industry and was among the first in Austria to incorporate HVO into marine transportation by launching and selling 18,000 liters of the more sustainable Marine Gasoil ECO20 in September 2024.
ADNOC Refining & ADNOC Global Trading
Alongside majority shareholder ADNOC (65%) and Eni (20%), OMV (15%) is a strategic partner in ADNOC Refining, which operates the world’s fourth-largest refining complex with integrated petrochemicals business.
In 2024, ADNOC Refining safely and successfully conducted a planned turnaround of one of the major units (RFCC) on time and within budget, and benefited from a favorable margin environment at the beginning of the year. However, from the second quarter of 2024 onward, its business experienced a slowdown in line with global market trends. Focusing on continuous optimization, ADNOC Refining safely started commercial operations of the Crude Flexibility Project in 2024, ensuring the refinery is able to process a wider range of crudes and thus realizing the full potential of this complex refinery and its product portfolio.
With the same ownership structure as ADNOC Refining, ADNOC Global Trading (AGT) trades the majority of ADNOC Refining’s export volumes of products and supplies non-domestic crudes, condensates, and other liquids for processing. AGT extends the successful business model into key geographic regions. By continuously optimizing trade flows in cooperation with ADNOC, AGT allows ADNOC Refining to access competitive international feedstock sources and implements best practices in areas such as risk management. During 2024, AGT delivered another year of very strong performance, continuing its pursuit of its business ambition to grow its third-party trading, which today extends its geographic reach to all continents.
Retail
The retail business achieved a strong result in 2024, and proved again to be a stable outlet for refinery products and a robust cash generator. Total sales were 5.5 mn t, equivalent to approximately 6.8 bn l, strongly supported by recovering premium fuel trends and ongoing growth in the cards business. In addition, OMV further strengthened its retail footprint by acquiring the truck-focused AP network in Austria in July 2024, as well as the B2C network of BENZINOL in Slovakia in April and May 2024, thus securing our market share in these key countries. At the end of the year, the network comprised 1,702 filling stations (2023: 1,666).
OMV especially benefited from its proven multi-brand strategy in a challenging price environment. The OMV brand is positioned as a premium brand, with VIVA representing a strong shop, gastronomy, and service offering, while the unmanned Avanti brand in Austria and the Petrom brand in Romania serve price-sensitive customer groups. Sales of OMV’s premium-brand fuel MaxxMotion continued to grow strongly, supported by robust loyalty-driven marketing campaigns, and contributed to the overall Retail result as a high margin product. The non-fuel business outperformed the year 2023, with strong growth in gastronomy and expanding shop cooperations in Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. In all countries except Hungary and Moldova, the loyalty system has been successfully upgraded with state-of-the-art digital solutions and over 2 mn active customers continuously use the new loyalty app. Meaningful growth of MaxxMotion, fuel consumption, and non-fuel business basket size have been observed among loyal customers.
OMV successfully continued on its electromobility journey and implemented full operating systems including CPO (Charge Point Operator), eMSP (eMobility Service Provider), and app modules in Austria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. In addition, in May 2024, OMV Petrom successfully finalized its acquisition of Renovatio Asset Management, the leading EV charging company in Romania. By the end of 2024, OMV operated 804 high-performance charging points (2023: 281).