Gulf Oil International Group this past Friday celebrated the official opening of its new state-of-the-art blending plant, in the town of La Reja, a province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The new plant has the capacity to blend 24,000 tons per year and has an initial production target of 6,000 tons per year. For the next three years production is estimated at 9.600 tons per year with it ultimately planned to reach 15,000 tons per year in five years, from a single shift. With this volume, Gulf Oil Argentina would be providing for 5% of the national market.
Approximately 38 kilometers from the countrys capital, Buenos Aires, the new plant has been built on a 20,000 square meter area - with 6,000 square meters of that being covered space, and is located on the Acceso Oeste highway that links the main routes of the MERCOSUR customs union countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela), which logistically offers Gulf products an important competitive edge in the region.
Emilio Alvarez Cañedo, CEO of Gulf Oil Argentina, told OEM/Lube News "Presently there is a duty of 45% for exports but there is an expectation that this will disappear. Many companies are leaving the downstream industry, we feel that there is a very good opportunity to increase our market share. This is why we took the decision to build this new plant with a capacity of 24,000 MT/year in only 1 shift, with export capability"
Gulfs old plant, which was situated on the outskirts of Buenos Aries, presented the company with limited space for development and offered certain logistical difficulties. This, coupled with an increasing demand for Gulf products, made the decision to build a new plant inevitable, Emilio Alvarez Cañedo said. All operations are being transferred to the new plant.
The new plant is the result of nearly a decade of strong business growth. Delivery in a timely manner has always been one of the great attributes of the company. So it was decided to build a new plant. he said.
Capacity increase apart, the major improvement over Gulfs old plant is that the production process is now fully automated. The design concept of the plant was to deliver an automated assembly line, where raw material enters at one side and finished product for distribution leaves at the other.
The plant is automated to the point that we did not have much need to expand our operating staff. We only added positions in maintenance and quality areas, continues Emilio Alvarez Cañedo, who also explains how the new Gulf plant is unique amongst other such facilities nationally. Nowadays in Argentina there are lubricants production plants that are much larger than ours, of course, but none is designed with this assembly line concept. They are all plants where parts were added, not integrated - like ours. And, we are able to deliver products in all kinds of packaging: from bulk trucks to 100 cubic cm packaging, through thousand litre containers, 205 litre drums, 20 litre buckets, 4 litre, one litre and 450 cubic cm bottles.
The plant also boasts a bespoke line for packing fruit spray oil in drums, which is extremely important, as one of Gulf Oil Argentinas most successful product lines is the Argenfrut range of natural, environmentally friendly pesticides.
Base oil storage capacity for the new plant is 1,100 cubic meters, which comprises 33 tanks of 33 cubic meters each. The tanks are located in the plants outer area, which is dedicated to handling bulk commodities. Each type of raw material has its own exclusive filling line in the blending zone, thus preventing any contamination between raw materials. The facility can also stock 1,150 pallets of finished products - the equivalent of 1,000 cubic meters of product - and has a truck scale for precise control of raw material movement and bulk finished products.
"The opening of the new plant will also herald a growth in the range of products on offer from Gulf in Argentina. Over the next two years we have prepared a schedule of new products and packaging launches to reach market segments that we couldnt supply, until now, explains Emilio Alvarez Cañedo. The first two releases of this schedule are already in the market: the semi-synthetic 10W-40 Gulf Tec and the Gulf Pride 4T for motorbikes and of course with synthetic and other top tiers to follow.
As mentioned above, Gulf Oil states that while the lubricant companies that have been traditionally labeled as Majors are leaving the downstream lubricant business to concentrate on oil extraction, Gulf Oil, by contrast, has made a strategic decision to expand its downstream operations to take advantage of this existing and growing market opportunity. The recent purchase of leading global metal working fluids manufacturer Houghton International took Gulf into the worlds top ten lubricant brands and the opening of this new plant is a further indication of Gulfs commitment to accelerated growth in the downstream lubricant sector, he states.
OEM/Lube News contacted research and consulting firm Kline & Company, YPF and Gulf to obtain Argentina lubricant market share information. All three responded with ever so slightly different data and the consensus response was summarized as follows: YPF 37%, Shell 21%, Total 11%, ExxonMobil (Esso) 9%, Petrobras 7%, Chevron 4%, Gulf 3%, Others 8%. Relative newcomer Petronas has captured 3 percent of the market. Kline also advised OEM/Lube News that they estimate the overall Argentina lubricant market in 2012 at 278,500 tons, growing to 298,000 tons by 2016.
This new Argentina plant is the second new Gulf blending facility to open inside a month, coming on the heels of Gulfs new blending facility in Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE.
