The ORLEN Group will be present at this year’s prestigious sporting event, the 2023 European Games. It will take place in Kraków, Poland, from 21 June to 2 July. Among other things, ORLEN, the largest corporation in Central and Eastern Europe, will be increasing awareness about the change of the joint ORLEN Benzina brand to ORLEN during the event, which will complete the long-term process of brand unification of the network of filling stations in Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the ORLEN Group, which has long supported sports teams and sporting events in the countries where it is present, is the main partner of the Formula One Scuderia AlphaTauri team this year.
“For several years, we have been consistently building a multi-energy company that belongs among the 150 largest firms in the world. Our products are available in almost one hundred countries. We need a strong and recognisable brand that we have also been building through our involvement in sponsorship projects. Last year, it provided us with an advertising equivalent of a record PLN 1.4 billion,” says Daniel Obajtek, chairman of PKN ORLEN’s board of directors. He adds: “As a general sponsor, we are joining a group of partners of the Kraków-Małopolska 2023 European Games. We will support the organisation of the largest multi-sport event in the history of Poland that will be broadcast in more than 50 countries. As a result, we will strengthen the ORLEN brand even more and promote our country’s image abroad.”
As part of this collaboration, the ORLEN brand will be on the athletes’ bib numbers, volunteers’ T-shirts, LED screens and banners at all sports arenas and in the digital campaign at the Krakow-Balice International Airport. In addition, the European Games vehicle fleet will be using the company’s filling stations, and some of the vehicles will be powered by hydrogen from the first mobile hydrogen filling station that the PKN ORLEN Group recently opened in Kraków.
“The participation of the ORLEN Unipetrol Group in this prestigious sporting event is viewed as an excellent opportunity to strengthen the public awareness of the process of the gradual renaming of our ORLEN Benzina network of filling stations to the ORLEN brand, which motorists encounter not only in our country but also in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, and Slovakia,” says Tomasz Wiatrak, chairman of ORLEN Unipetrol’s board of directors.
During the European Games, athletes will compete in 26 events, 18 of which will be Olympic sports. The events include athletics, shooting, archery, canoe sprint and canoe slalom, table tennis, 3x3 basketball, fencing, modern pentathlon, rugby sevens, triathlon, judo, artistic swimming and diving, badminton, boxing, sport climbing, taekwondo, mountain bike cycling and new Olympic disciplines, BMX freestyle and breaking. The non-Olympic sports events will include karate, teqball, padel, kickboxing, Muaythai, beach handball, beach soccer and summer ski jumping, popular in Poland.
The Czech Republic can be represented by almost 200 athletes at the European Games. Many will also try to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, while the event will be used as a European championship in some sports. According to estimates, approximately 7,000 athletes from as many as 48 countries should come to Kraków, Poland, to compete. The 2023 European Games should promote values such as a healthy lifestyle, the idea of fair play, friendship among nations, and the cultural and educational heritage of the host country and the Lesser Poland Voivodeship, where Kraków is located.
The ORLEN Unipetrol Group is the largest refining and petrochemical company in the Czech Republic. It focuses on crude oil processing and the production, distribution and sale of vehicle fuels and petrochemical products – particularly plastics and fertilisers. It belongs among the key players on the Czech and Central European markets in all these areas. The ORLEN Unipetrol Group encompasses refineries and production plants in Litvínov and Kralupy nad Vltavou, Paramo in Pardubice, Spolana in Neratovice, REMAQ in Otrokovice, and two research centres in Litvínov and Brno. Unipetrol also includes the Benzina ORLEN filling station network in the Czech Republic and a network of ORLEN outlets in Slovakia and Hungary. In 2005, ORLEN Unipetrol became a member of the ORLEN Group, the largest multi-energy company in Central Europe. ORLEN Unipetrol employs almost 6,000 people and is active in corporate social responsibility. It seeks to promote initiatives that cultivate and support sustainable development, education, local communities, and the environment.