THE Blackburn-based EG Group has entered a bidding war to buy an Australian convenience store, petrol station and refinery firm.

The firm, owned by multi-millionaire brothers Mohsin and Zuber Issa, has made a £2billion bid for Caltex Australia Ltd which is already subject to a rival bid from the Canadian group Alimentation Couche-Tard.

EG group already has interests in Australia having bought supermarket operator Woolworths Group’s petrol stations in 2018.

Yesterday the Lancashire Telegraph revealed that the Issa brothers are to close Mellor's award-winning Stanley House Hotel and Spa, which they bought as a private investment, at the and of September costing 80 jobs.

The cash bid by EG Group, formerly Euro Garages, was revealed in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange by Caltex.

If the bid succeeds it would fit in with their existing business interests world-wide.

The brothers first venture was buying a petrol forecourt in Bury for £150,000 in 2001 before rapidly expanding across East Lancashire and the UK creating Euro Garages.

The company, headquartered on Blackburn’s Beehive Trading Park in Haslingden Road, merged with private equity firm TDR Capital’s European Forecourt Retail Group in 2016 to create the EG Group and expanded rapidly into Europe and the US.

It had a 2018 turnover in excess of £12bn and employs 25,000 staff.

The brothers’ parents arrived in Blackburn from India in the 1960s and they own a £25million mansion in Knightsbridge in Central London and luxury houses in their home town.

EG’s bid proposes the creation of separate company, dubbed Ampol, trading on the Australian Stock Exchange and would include Caltex’s existing fuel business and international shipping and trading operations.

The offer is backed by TDR Capital.

The Issa brothers have so far declined to comment on the future of the Stanley House Hotel site or their bid for Caltex.