Forecourt Retailing:The first filling station along the Dublin-Belfast M1 motorway will not be run by one of the leading petrol retailers.

Instead, the site at the southern Balbriggan interchange will trade as Applegreen, a company owned by Petrogas Group Ltd who already have 14 stations in the Republic.

The site of just over one acre has been sold by Treasury Holdings for a figure believed to be around €3.5 million.

The petrol filling station will be the first phase of a extensive motorway service area which will also include a hotel, restaurants and cafés, retail facilities and a bank.

Treasury has 160 acres of development land on all four sides of the interchange. The planners have sub-divided the land for specific uses, including science and technology, warehousing, industrial and light industrial uses.

Since the official opening of the M1 in 2003, traffic levels have continuously exceeded expectations and now average around 55,000 vehicles per day, making it the busiest motorway in the country.

The opening of the Applegreen station will come after a spate of closures by all the main petroleum retailers. The National Road Authority is hoping to offset the effects of these closures by making sites available for 12 new stations and motorway service areas on some of the existing motorways within the greater Dublin area.

Natalie Brennan of CB Richard Ellis, who handled the sale of the Balbriggan site, said the locations appealed to a number of operators because of the high level of traffic and the fact that it would be the first station on the motorway.

There was also considerable interest in Treasury Holdings' plans for a commercial development of over 160,000sq m (1.722 million sq ft) of buildings on the adjoining land.