Financial statements in the hydrocarbons sector reveal an unbridgeable gap between port supply and land distribution. Against a fragmented market of 721 active operators under CNAE code 4681, the financial statements of Minerva Combustibles Las Palmas, S.A. confirm profitability that multiplies by five the average of the distribution business in the Iberian Peninsula.
Audits verified by Canarymaritime reflect the strength of the bunkering business at Puerto de La Luz, through a historical series of EBITDA margin results that leave other wholesale competitors behind: 20.20% in 2019 to secure first place in the ranking of independent operators, 17.61% in 2020 while maintaining leadership in efficiency, and 13.75% in the subsequent period, with the company systematically ranking 1st and 2nd for efficiency.
The true scale of these figures is measured by cross-referencing them with the performance of traditional wholesale operators that manage service-station networks on the mainland. Corporations such as Kuwait Petroleum post structural EBITDA margins of no more than 3%, and even report net return on profitability, measured through EBIT and ROAI margins, below 2%, or directly negative balances. Canarymaritime has found that control over off-peninsular physical infrastructure shields Minerva from the higher “last-mile” transport costs that squeeze operators from the interior, since operating through large-volume fuel transactions directly at the quay to international vessels optimizes the rotation of port logistics assets.
Minerva’s financial-statement strength takes on critical value after the purge of the official registry triggered by tighter regulation aimed at VAT fraud. The broad classifications of the wholesale sector were historically distorted by paper companies with no real assets that inflated rankings through cross-trading. The data verified by this outlet recalls cases of Distribuciones Delazo (formerly Magna Oil), which recorded artificial margins of 34.73% in 2023 and 28.02% in 2024 before being fully disqualified, or the fictitious milestone of I-Manchamadrid, which posted an EBITDA ratio of 1,638.77% in 2019 before being definitively struck down by the tax authorities.
The prohibition on intermediate operations without a real logistical base has reduced the census of wholesale operators from 818 to 721 firms, leaving the market in the hands of the structures that have real pumping capacity. For major international shipping lines, the verified figures confirm that Minerva Combustibles Las Palmas has a real, healthy capital structure, able to absorb crude-price swings and to legitimately lead energy supply in the Mid-Atlantic, against unstable competitors that operate with very high year-on-year volatility.
The entry Minerva (Mercuria Energy) ridicules the bunkering sector: quadruples margins in the Canary Islands was first published at canarymaritime.com.
