Dive Brief:
- Parkland Corp. has received $9.5 million from the government of Quebec, Canada, to expand its electric vehicle charging infrastructure, the retailer announced in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday.
- The money, which Quebec allotted as part of its 2030 Plan for a Green Economy, will be used to install 104 charging ports at 14 Marché Express stations in the province. Marché Express is the Quebec branding for Parkland’s On the Run c-stores.
- The announcement comes as Parkland nears the expected Q4 closing of its $9.1 billion sale to oil company Sunoco.
Dive Insight:
Despite its pending sale, Parkland’s continued investment in EV charging shows that the company is still pushing its retail sites forward. Parkland’s latest grant is a particularly important investment considering more than half of Canada’s EVs are registered in Quebec.
Whether Sunoco keeps Parkland’s c-store business or sells it off once the deal closes, these EV chargers will set the selected sites up for the future.
“We sincerely thank the Government of Quebec for its generous contribution, which is helping the electromobility industry meet growing demand," said Darren Smart, president of Parkland's EV Charging Network, in the LinkedIn post.
Parkland’s EV charging journey began almost three years ago when it announced plans to build chargers at 25 On the Run stores in British Columbia. Roughly a year later, the company announced that it had opened EV charging to 37 sites in Canada and was seeing “much higher demand and higher levels of utilization than anticipated” according to then-President and CEO Bob Espey during the company’s 2023 investor day.
Espey also noted at the time that they were seeing a larger percent of EV drivers coming into the store than gas-powered vehicle drivers.
