Its destined to be started up in July of next year, Scott Miller, Safety-Kleens East Chicago director of refining, told Lube Report. Theres a tremendous cost-savings logistically, not having to ship the base oil off site, and also for what we pay the third-party blender. And we take control over our own destiny.

Safety-Kleens East Chicago, Ind., rerefinery has 800 b/d of API Group I and 4,200 b/d of Group II capacity. Safety-Kleen currently works with a third party blender to blend lubricants from its rerefined base oil. Were going to bring all that [blending] in-house, Miller said, including the companys EcoPower motor oil, heavy duty diesel oil and viscosity modifiers. We already blend hydraulics here, he noted.

Theres going to be a blending building, a tank farm, and a truck and rail loading facility, Miller said. Itll be an automated, computer blending system. Weve got about 100 people here now, and were going to hire three more to staff this. Itll be a one shift operation initially, but as capacity increases, we can add shifts.

He claimed that Safety-Kleen now supplies between 5 and 6 percent of the lubricants market in North America. In June, the company announced plans to begin preliminary engineering for its third North American base oil rerefinery, analyzing potential sites in the U.S. Southeast and Gulf Coast regions.

In addition to East Chicago, Safety-Kleen has a rerefinery in Breslau, Canada, with 700 barrels per day of Group I and 1,200 b/d of Group II capacity.