Ascona Group Brand Guidelines: A Pembrokeshire Forecourt Operator Built Site by Site

One service station in south-west Wales.

Ascona Group is a Welsh company. It was founded in 2011 by Darren Briggs in his home county of Pembrokeshire, in south-west Wales, the company says, and its head office is at Pembroke Dock. Retail Times, reporting in February 2025, described it as a Pembrokeshire-based business with operations across England, Wales and Scotland, and named Briggs as its founder and chief executive.

The company’s timeline says it was incorporated in January 2011 and that its first service station, that year, was Bush Hill, in Pembroke. A second site, Crossways Service Station, followed in May 2012. Briggs had earlier worked in the fuel industry, with roles at Elf Oil UK and Total UK, according to his company profile, and the group property director it lists also worked for Elf Oil UK and Total UK. In 2019 London Loves Business named Briggs, the property director Duncan Morris and the finance director Shane Higgon as the management team, with a combined 50 years’ experience in the fuel services industry.

For its first years Ascona stayed small. The company says it ran two sites in Pembrokeshire before a high-growth strategy began; one page dates that to 2018, while Retail Times gave 2017. By February 2019, London Loves Business reported, growth funding from the lender ThinCats had helped the group grow from seven to 16 sites, and the report described it as headquartered in Pembrokeshire. The plan then, it said, was a mixture of leasehold and freehold sites across the country, and the deal drew on South Wales accountants and solicitors in Cardiff, Swansea and Milford Haven.

From two sites to around seventy.

Acquisitions drove the next phase. The company’s timeline records 19 sites acquired in December 2019, its 50th forecourt, at Nuneaton, in January 2020, and four more in April 2021, for a total of 59. The Grocer reported that the Aylesbury forecourt had been in the Adams family’s ownership since the 1960s. In May 2021, the timeline says, it widened the portfolio beyond forecourts with a restaurant and a motel. The Grocer reported in April 2024 that a 20-year lease on the Adams Corner forecourt in Aylesbury had taken the estate to 62 sites.

Later additions listed by the company include three forecourts in Mid Wales in May 2025, a site in Newquay in October 2025, Camelford and Five Mile in November 2025, the five-site Kessock Group in December 2025 and, in July 2026, its 70th site, Truckhaven. The home page now gives a network of 69 sites and 70 retail locations, with about 900 team members and more than 300,000 customers a week.

Ascona describes its method as buying “unloved” mid-market forecourts, usually in independent or family ownership, and upgrading each one through a process it calls “Asconarisation”, with each site adapted to its local community. Its first site in Pembrokeshire shows the idea: in January 2021, the company says, it was knocked down and rebuilt as the flagship Green Garage Service Station.

How forecourt groups present themselves.

Fuel retailers rarely present a single face. Many forecourt groups run their stations under oil companies’ brands while building names of their own in the shop and the charging bay. Motor Fuel Group, the British operator, says its stations trade under six fuel brands — BP, Shell, Esso, Texaco, JET and Murco — alongside its own EV Power charging brand. In the United States, the British-founded EG Group renamed itself in 2026 after Cumberland Farms, its largest American store banner, and plans to convert hundreds more stores to that name, C-Store Dive reported.

Inside, the convenience store and the food-to-go counter carry much of the offer. MFG lists Londis, Budgens and Morrisons Daily shops alongside Greggs, Pret, Subway and Burger King, and in May 2026 hosted the first trial of Greggs Express, a compact self-service unit. Cumberland Farms plans to take Krispy Krunchy Chicken to 500 locations by 2030 and is piloting its own Maxi Fresh Bakery in Germany, according to the same publication.

Apps and maps do much of the remaining work. MFG’s Connect app lets drivers start and pay for charging sessions, and the station finder on its website covers both fuel stations and charging hubs. Coen Markets, the Pittsburgh-area chain that Cumberland Farms agreed to buy in March 2026, describes its Club Coen loyalty programme as part of its growth. In Australia, Ampol’s completion of its purchase of EG Australia in July 2026 came with plans for a wider rollout of the Woolworths Everyday Rewards programme across the sites, according to a TipRanks summary of Ampol’s announcement.

Charging is the newest addition. MFG announced plans in March 2021 for ultra-rapid chargers across 500 sites, said in July 2025 that it had passed 1,000 ultra-rapid bays, and since May 2026 has offered Plug & Charge across most of its network through Octopus Electroverse. The guides in this group set out what each company publishes about those formats, and what independent sources record about who owns them.

Partner fascias and in-house brands under one group name.

Inside the shops, Ascona mixes partner brands with its own. Nisa is its main supplier, The Grocer reported in 2024, and the company lists Starbucks, Costa Coffee, Subway and Greggs among its food and drink partners. Its own brands include the Ascona Fish Bar, which the company says first opened in 2019, Instawash launderettes, Ascona Jet Wash and Charlie’s car and truck washes. On the forecourt, fuel brands vary by site: The Grocer reported in February 2021 that Jet, owned by Phillips 66, would supply 13 Ascona forecourts after ten switched from Harvest Energy, making Ascona one of Jet’s largest retail customers, under a licensed supply contract running until 2026. The company’s timeline adds Valero fuel in 2025. It also lists Ascona Fill n Go, a format of unmanned service stations.

The group is led by its founder, and its holding company is Ascona Group Holdings. In April 2024 the Costcutter founder Colin Graves joined the board as a non-executive director, The Grocer reported; Graves founded Costcutter in 1986 and had chaired the advisory board of Nisa, and Briggs said at the time that the group aimed to become one of the top four independent fuel retailers. In February 2025 Retail Times reported a refinancing package led by HSBC UK, with Barclays, to support further growth, and described Ascona as the seventh largest UK independent forecourt operator. The same publication reported that Ascona featured in the UK Fast Growth Index in October 2024 for the second year running, that two of its forecourts won at the Forecourt Trader awards in 2024, and that Briggs was named Scale-up Entrepreneur of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards in November 2023.

The company calls itself one of the UK’s fastest-growing forecourt operators, and its pages put the Ascona name beside a changing set of fuel and shop partners rather than one fixed forecourt look. Community work is part of the story it tells: it named the Wales Air Ambulance as its corporate charity for 2023/24, and says its Ascona Giving Committee backs local causes such as children’s sports teams and food banks.

For a design guide, Ascona Group shows how a regional forecourt group can carry one name across many partner fascias and its own small brands. Compare Rontec and Motor Fuel Group, two other UK independent forecourt groups. For this guide we use a deep green, a sea blue and a sand neutral with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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