Vivo Energy Brand Guidelines: A 2011 Shell Licensee, Engen & a Move Into Jordan

Formed in 2011 to take over Shell’s African fuel retail business.

Vivo Energy was set up in 2011 as a partnership between the oil trader Vitol and the private equity firm Helios Investment Partners, English Wikipedia says, with the aim of buying a majority of Shell’s downstream fuels business in Africa. It was not launched as a new forecourt brand. The stations it took over kept the Shell name, and Vivo Energy became a licensee, selling Shell-branded fuels and lubricants rather than putting its own name on the canopy.

The handover happened market by market. According to English Wikipedia, Cape Verde, Senegal, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco and Tunisia joined in December 2011; Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea followed in February 2012; Botswana and Namibia in October 2012; Kenya in November 2012; and Uganda, Ghana and Mozambique during 2013. The Star, the Nairobi newspaper, dates Vivo Energy Kenya to 2012. In Morocco, the company says, the Shell brand has been present for more than a hundred years, so the new owner took on a long local history along with the stations.

In May 2018 the company listed its shares on the London Stock Exchange, with a secondary listing in Johannesburg, and it joined the FTSE 250 index, English Wikipedia says. That public phase was short. Vitol moved to buy the whole company, and in July 2022 it secured the regulatory and competition approvals it needed; Vivo Energy’s own February 2023 statement refers to Vitol’s acquisition of 100% of the business “last year.” Today the website’s copyright line names Vivo Energy Holding B.V., while English Wikipedia places the headquarters in London.

Two names on the forecourt: Shell and Engen.

A second retail brand arrived in March 2019, when Vivo Energy completed a transaction with Engen Petroleum that added eight countries and 230 Engen-branded service stations, English Wikipedia says. Gabon, Malawi, Réunion, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe were among the new markets. From then on the company ran two retail identities side by side: Shell in its original markets and Engen in the newer ones.

The larger step came next. On 9 February 2023 Vivo Energy and Engen announced that the two businesses would combine, with PETRONAS selling its 74% shareholding in Engen to Vivo Energy. At that point Engen had around 1,300 service stations across seven African countries, the announcement said. The deal was completed on 21 May 2024, according to the company’s completion statement, which put the enlarged group at more than 3,900 service stations across 28 African markets. Engen’s long-standing South African shareholder, the Phembani Group, kept a 21% stake in the South African business, and a new 5% employee share scheme was created.

That made Engen something different from Shell inside the group. Shell is a licensed brand; Engen now belongs to Vivo Energy. In October 2023 the company also bought Somagaz, a liquefied petroleum gas business in the Indian Ocean, English Wikipedia says, and its website lists Somagaz as the gas brand in Mayotte. Other LPG names it sells include Shell Gas LPG, Butagaz, Afrigas and GasIt in its Shell markets, and Engen LPG and Petregaz in its Engen markets, the company says.

In Morocco, Vivo Energy Maroc chose a settlement agreement with the Conseil de la Concurrence, the national competition authority, to close that body’s investigation of the fuel-marketing industry, the company announced on 28 November 2023.

Canopies, shops and loyalty cards.

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.

A first market outside Africa, under the group’s own brand.

On 1 July 2026 Vivo Energy completed the purchase of 100% of TotalEnergies Marketing Jordan, including a network of around 180 service stations and its commercial fuels and lubricants operations, the Jordan News Agency (Petra) reported that day. The deal had been announced in November 2025. The Star described it as the company’s first expansion beyond Africa, and the Jordan Times, republished by Zawya, reported that Engen would replace TotalEnergies on Jordan’s forecourts over the following months. In a new region, the group led with the name it owns rather than the one it licenses.

The company now describes itself as the business “behind the Shell and Engen brands” across 29 markets, with around 4,200 service stations and about 6,000 employees, according to its website. Most sites, it says, are owned by the company but run by local dealers. Its retail offer includes fuels and lubricants, convenience shops, quick-service restaurants, oil-change bays, car washes and banking services, and it runs fuel payment cards and loyalty cards in both its Shell and Engen markets; in certain countries customers can also use rechargeable prepaid cards to pay for fuel and some goods and services at its stations. The website says the company builds a new service station every three days on average, and that it sells Shell Helix lubricants made at its own blending plants.

For most drivers, then, the name on the forecourt is Shell or Engen. Vivo Energy itself appears on the group website, its statements and its investor pages, which list its markets under two headings, one for each brand.

For a design guide, Vivo Energy shows how one company can run a licensed brand and an owned brand side by side, and choose which to take into a new country. Compare Shell, whose name Vivo Energy carries in its original African markets, and Puma Energy, another trader-owned fuel group with a large African network. For this guide we use deep teal, a savanna ochre and sandstone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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