Normalised employment in Service Stations
Guregas Carburantes is a business initiative belonging to Grupo Gureak in collaboration with Repsol, which was set up in order to create employment for people with disabilities in a normalized environment.
The initiative took off in 1995 with the management of one highway service station belonging to Repsol, in Tolosa on the N-1, which became the first service station in the whole state to be entirely managed by people with disabilities.
Two years later, in 1997, the urban service station Repsol owns in Miramon was placed under new management, and in 2000 we took management of the first dual-side highway service station, Repsol’s Aginaga service station in Usurbil.
In 2005 Guregas opened the first service station belonging to Grupo Gureak, in Beasain on the N-1. It is an out-of-town service station with a large urban customer base, where the experience and knowledge attained in managing the initial three types of establishment meant that they could offer a wide range of services to their customers (hotel, restaurant, carwash, shop, HGV-driver rest area, launderette, pet-wash, wifi area, meeting rooms, etc.)
Guregas added the running of the Legorreta service station in 2006 and Oñati in 2008, both businesses on the outskirts of their respective towns.
Although today Guregas runs 6 service stations in Guipuzcoa and 7 in Navarre, and holds several quality standard certificates (ISO 9001 and UNE 175001) which attest to the quality of the service they provide, their beginnings were not at all easy. They were obliged to change the “vision” the customers had initially of the ability of people with mental disabilities to run a business like this.
Key to today’s success enjoyed by Guregas is the well-cared-for image of the premises and the attentive manner of our employees, which has gradually demonstrated their professional capabilities in attending to and resolving the problems or needs of the customers who stop at our service stations.
Thanks to the day to day experience and continuous training in a wide variety of disciplines received by our employees, we have been able to demonstrate their skill in the efficient management of this type of activity. We have now set ourselves the new goal of strengthening our position in the sector – the same goal Guregas has always had.
In the future we would like to increase the number of service stations we run, and to offer new and different services, so that this diversity permits us to generate new opportunities for our staff, including the opportunity to develop new skills.
Iñigo San Sebastián Uranga.
Director of Operations
Guregas Carburantes
www.grupogureak.com