Gazprom Neft has announced the opening of a second production facility for the blending and packaging of motor oils at its Omsk Lubricants Plant. The new high-tech facility is the largest in Russia in terms of total blending and packaging capacity, able to process up to 110,000 tonnes of motor oils and other finished lubricants, and with the capacity to package 180,000 tonnes of finished product.
Facilities at the plant include five mixing stations, a piping system to ensure the separate manufacturing of individual oils, high-precision additive metering machinery, and special devices for the preparation of mixing components, all of which allows maximum efficiency and fully automated production of a wide range of motor oils, including those under the G-Energy and Gazpromneft brands. The packaging station can handle more than 350 products and has sufficient capacity to store up to 10,000 tonnes of pre-packaged oils at any one time. The introduction of these state-of-the-art technologies, previously only available at the Gazprom Neft plant in Bari, Italy, means that average production times have been cut to four hours.
Development of the new Omsk facility took place in two phases, at a cost of around RUB3.4 billion (US$94.4 million). May 2012 saw the commissioning of priority production line facilities for the manufacturing of containers and packaging, as well as a storage facility for raw materials and finished products, and a cutting-edge receiving facility. The second phase saw the construction of a fully automated oil mixing station.
Anatoly Cherner, Deputy General Director for Logistics, Processing and Sales, Gazprom Neft, commented: The introduction of new, cutting-edge production techniques at the Omsk Lubricants Plant will enable Gazprom Neft to produce high-tech motor oils in Russia directly competitive with their Western equivalents, as well as providing Russian consumers with top-quality products. All the experience gained in managing our assets in other countries has been directly applied to the new Russian site. The next major project at the Omsk Lubricants Plant, planned for 2018, will be the production of high-purity base oils meaning we will no longer need to import raw materials to produce high-quality oils, further strengthening our competitive position in Russia and the CIS.
The Omsk Lubricants Plant is the main production facility of Gazprom Neft motor oils subsidiary Gazpromneft Lubricants. The company has a total of five motor oil production facilities in Russia, Italy, and Serbia. Total production volumes of premium lubricants and engine oils and fluids stand at 490,000 tonnes per year. Gazpromneft Lubricants produces oils for petrol and diesel domestic and heavy-goods vehicles (HGVs), transmission and hydraulic fluids, industrial oils, car-servicing products and cooling fluids under the G-Family and Gazpromneft brands, as well as marine oils sold under the Texaco brand. The companys product range includes more than 400 different oils and lubricants for all market sectors, encompassing more than 1,300 different product lines.
Gazpromneft Lubricants has a 14-percent share of the lubricants market in Russia, as well as operating in the markets of the European Union, Belarus, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Ukraine, and the Middle East. The company extended its presence in international markets throughout 2013, reaching a total 42 and commencing deliveries to Afghanistan, the Dominican Republic, Hungary, Lebanon, Nigeria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
