Further our story last week "Gulf Oil Corp Ltd Demerges Lube Business; Plans to Build New India Blending Plant", in which we mentioned Gulf plans to build a new plant, details were not available at the time of publication of our story. Gulf Oil Corporation, one of the longest established players in the lubricant market in India has advised such details to OEM/Lube News.
Gulf Oil Lubricants India Limited, the newly demerged lubricant company, said it is planning to increase the capacity of its current Silvassa (near Mumbai) plant from 75,000 MT to 100,000 MT per annum. There are also plans to build a second lubricants blending plant near Chennai in the next 24 months. The new blending plant has a planned capacity of 50,000 MT, which can be phased up in the future. The proposed facility in the South will enable Gulf to take advantage of the brands strength in Southern India and work closer with the growing number of major global OEMs now based near Chennai. The site will also support plans for increased exports and help the company to meet the needs of its customers now and for the future.
Its parent company, Gulf Oil Corp. Ltd will principally concentrate on real estate projects and property development in its projects located in Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Data obtained by OEM/Lube News from George Morvey, Industry Manager, Kline's Energy Practice shows that India's 2012 total finished lubricant demand was 2,111.0 KT, with Indian Oil Corp having the largest market share at 22%, followed by BP at 11%, Hindustan Petroleum 10%, Apar 8%, Bharat Petroleum 8%, Raj 6%, Columbia Petro 5%, Savita 4%, Valvoline 3%, Shell 3%, Total 3%, Gulf Oil 3%, Veedol 2%, ExxonMobil 1% and others.
According to Kline's data, of Indias total finished lubricant demand of 2,111 KT, industrial oils demand was 1,085.0 KT and automotive demand was 1,026.0 KT KT. The industrial lubricant segment figure includes process oil and other industrial oils such as heat transfer fluids, wire rope, rock drill, concrete form oils, etc.
Morvey said that Gulf's market share was approximately 56,700 MT, making one wonder why Gulf is increasing its capacity to 150,000 MT for the two plants. This leads one to believe that Gulf may plan to include additional toll blending as well as blending Houghton product in India. Also, a Hinduja brother previously made a public statement that Gulf is looking at one or two major lubes related acquisitions in the short term; perhaps they are preparing for this.
