After selling its petrol stations in Thailand to local retailer Susco two years ago, Malaysia's national oil company PETRONAS, short for Petroliam Nasional Berhad, is re-entering the Thai market. The company says it will focus on the lubricant market, aiming to be in the top five in the Bt50 (US$1.55) billion Thai lube market within five years.
Led by Nattapong Asavathongskul, a former industrial lubricant manager at Shell Thailand, PETRONAS aims to be in the top five lubricant companies in terms of market share by 2020. According to the company, Thailand's PTT, Shell, and BP-Castrol hold about half of the Thai lubricant market, which totals about 600 million litres valued at about Bt50 billion per year. Thailand's lube market is second only to Indonesia's among Southeast Asian nations.
George Morvey, Industry Manager, Energy Practice, Kline & Company told OEM/Lube News "We estimate Thailands finished lubricant demand including process oil and marine at 651.0 KT in 2013 with the market leaders and approximate market share being PTT Public Co. Ltd. 22%, Shell 18%, BP 9%, ExxonMobil 7%, Chevron 5%", fairly much in agreement with the above mentioned data.
PETRONAS targets total lubricant sales of 10.8 million litres this year after selling 7 million litres in the first eight months. It has set an aggressive target to grow its market share to at least 7-8 per cent in the next five years.
Nattapong said the parent company had allocated a Bt1 billion annual budget to support the Thai operations, including marketing and other support budgets.
Although PETRONAS has a full range of industrial and automotive lube products, it plans to initially focus on the PCMO segment with its PETRONAS Syntium range of passenger car engine oils.
