SHELL has relaunched its pan-European fuel card business, euroShell, as fleet demand for the fuel purchasing and management system grows at 10% per month.

The new Rotterdam-based organisation has 1.6 million customers with 4.5 million cards across 32 countries, including 250,000 pan-European customers.

Eduard Schaepman, chief executive officer of euroShell Cards, said the business was growing rapidly because of the greater mobility of fleet drivers crossing national borders for their work, and the desire of companies to consolidate their purchasing.

'Medium and large firms are going for one supplier where possible,' he said.

This has placed pressure on oil companies to develop their filling station networks around Europe, and in the interim to establish partnerships with rivals to ensure drivers always have somewhere to refuel.

Shell has also consolidated card transactions on to a single platform to enable it to improve the speed and detail of its management reporting, and all card services will be integrated into the new model by 2002. 'All our customers will be able to go on-line and set up management information the way they want it. About 150 customers are piloting the system at the moment,' said Schaepman. (April 2000)