The conditions a business like this actually operates in.

Butane is not an ordinary product in Morocco. It is the cooking fuel of a very large share of households, and its price has for decades been held below cost by the Caisse de Compensation, the state compensation fund. Reporting around the 2014 reforms put the subsidised price of a standard canister at about 42 dirhams against an unsubsidised cost nearer 120, with the butane subsidy bill reaching 13.3 billion dirhams in 2014.

From May 2024 the government began progressively reducing that support, with the stated intention of replacing it with direct cash transfers to households. For a company such as Afriquia Gaz this is the defining feature of its operating environment: it sells an essential good at an administered price, and the terms of that arrangement are periodically rewritten by the state.

Competence in this market therefore looks unusual from the outside. It is not principally about pricing or marketing. It is about cost control, security of supply, logistics and the ability to keep bottles moving reliably to millions of homes whatever the policy of the moment.

Morocco’s fuel retail network reached 3,534 service stations in 2024. The nine largest operators — Afriquia SMDC among them — held around 84 per cent of the market that year, down from 89 per cent the year before, and directly controlled roughly 72 per cent of the station network.

Two things are happening simultaneously: the network is growing, and the majors’ collective share is slowly eroding as independents expand. Scale still matters enormously, but it is no longer sufficient on its own.