TIRANA, Wednesday 18ؔhree months after its privatization, ARMO Company reintroduces after 30 years the Albanian eurodiesel. It has a very low percentage of sulfates which makes it better quality than the import eurodiesel.
“From the lab analysis made so far, it results that our eurodiesel is of a better quality than the one imported from the international market. Our next objective is to lower the sulfates percentage of our product close to zero,” Rezart Taci said, CEO of ARMO.
According to the Albanian company, the introduction of the Albanian eurodiesel might lower petrol prices in the country therefore being of huge benefit to the consumers.
“We plan to double the production capacity of ARMO in the close future, which should result into lower eurodiesel prices offered by our company and the market in general,” said ARMO.
ARMO was privatized last December by a consortium including “Refinery Associates of Texas,” “Anika Enterprise,” and “Mercuria Energy Group” for a total some of 125 Mln EUR, 85% in company stakes. The new ownership vowed to invest up to 100 Mlb EUR for the company within the next two years
Meanwhile, average eurodiesel prices in Albania went up last week by 10 ALL (8 cents) with real prices reaching 119 ALL on Tuesday 17. Petrol importers attribute the rise of prices to the flat excise of 37 ALL recently introduced by the government which is not dependent to global petrol prices or the type of petrol product. However, despite the new excise, profit margins of 20%-40% from importers are far too great to justify the recent rise in prices.
Albanian Competition Authority (CAA) announced an investigation of the operators in the petrol market. According to CAA, the recent prices reflect an oligopoly behavior by the petrol companies, thus hurting the competition and damaging the Albanian consumer.
