Car retailers have been advised to act now to formulate long-term energy and business strategies after post-COVID trading left operating expenses and employees stretched to "breaking point".

In the latest episode of the AM News Show podcast, former Drive Motor Retail and Cambria director Chris Roberts and Journey Energy Solutions’ chief exeutive Darren Riva focus on the neccessity of resilience and security in a sector being rocked by a series of operational challenges that look set to gather momentum in the months ahead.

Among the subjects tackled, as the pair engaged in conversation with AM editor Tim Rose and managing editor Tom Sharpe, were:

• Cutting overheads and securing your electricity supply in a volatile period for the energy sector
• Readying your business for a future dominated by electric vehicles (EV)
• Planning ahead to generate growth and avoid staff burnout
• Opportunities in a new era of aftersales

Commenting on car retail’s ongoing energy challenges, Riva said: “We are no longer in a place where we’re going to pay 16p per kilowatt hour for electricity. Those times are in the dim and distant past.

“Over the last 18 months the fact that (car retailers’) op-ex has gone through the roof has definitely flipped the focus back to pounds saved and obviously, in a lot of cases hundreds, of thousands of pounds of savings can be made each month by managing usage on-site.

“The story will go very quickly away from cost and that investment to make your business secure is potentially better done sooner than when somebody else has taken all your power.”

On the need for car retailers to plan ahead after the short-term wins of the post-COVID trading period, Roberts, now managing drector Roberts Corporate Associates, said: “You get up in a morning and you’ve got to make the day happen, make the week happen, hit the numbers, make the money, and it consumes people massively.

“In a lot of business’ I’m involved with the teams are all so lean it is 24/7 and you do worry about burnout, to be fair, because the senior management teams are trying to do all things.

“However, you can’t ignore that fact that you have to have a strategy for the business and the owners and shareholders should be thinking about that at board level and thinking what should my business look like because the problem you have, I think, is complacency.

“We’ve had two great years but things do tip over.”

The AM News Show is produced in partnership with Armchair Marketing.

AM readers can catch-up with the full back catalogue of interviews by clicking here.