Finnish retail group to expand fast-charging network

The Finnish retail cooperative S Group plans to triple the charging station network at its shops by the end of this year – from 50 locations at the end of 2021 to over 150 locations with a total of around 1,000 charging points by the end of 2022.

The company says it is focussing of the expansion is on fast chargers. More than 40 new sites are currently under construction, with another 70 planned in various parts of Finland by the end of the year. Each location will have several charging points.

S Group is using its own petrol station subsidiary ABC to build and operate the charging points. The charging stations themselves will be supplied by the Finnish manufacturer Kempower. No details are given about the charging stations, but they will be power and high-power chargers – i.e. DC chargers with different speeds.

The company says that customers of ABC Charging mainly want power and high-power chargers for charging stations, with which the car can be charged quickly even during shorter breaks. Customers are being promised they will be met by greatly increasing the number of power and high-power charging points this year.

The first ABC charging station did not go into operation until April 2021, and there are currently more than 500 charging points at 75 locations across Finland – but this still includes 298 AC chargers with 22 kW.

The various retail chains of the S Group includes the large hypermarkets called Prisma, the grocer Herkku, the supermarket chain S market, and two chains of smaller grocery shops called Sale (rural and suburban areas) and Alepa (Helsinki metropolitan area).
esmmagazine.com, s-ryhma.fi (press release in Finnish)