While passenger car sales were up 3.1% in 2024, conventional car sales dropped 17.4% as electric vehicle sales surged 35.5%, thanks to government subsidies and a highly intense price war waged by EV manufacturers, according to China’s association of automobile manufacturers.

Its facilities in Huizhou, Guangdong province, and Changzhou, Jiangsu province, will continue to supply lube products, including motor oils and industrial oils, to the Chinese market, the company said in a press release.

Idemitsu opened the Tianjin factory in 2004 and doubled the capacity to 1.2 million liters per year in 2015. In 2018, it started to build the Huizhou facility, which shares similar capacity with Tianjin. Both facilities are wholly owned by Idemitsu.

Zhang Chenhui, retired former Sinopec executive and an industry veteran, said at a recent industry conference in Shanghai that foreign lube suppliers as a whole are losing market share to Chinese counterparts, falling from 28% to 25%.

“Chinese lube suppliers are very competitive in the mass market,” he said.

However, Chenhui acknowledged that foreign companies are selling lucrative, high-quality industrial lubes in China as the country is moving up the value chain.

China is not the only market that Idemitsu is overhauling. In January, the company announced a big change in Thailand, where it will integrate a joint venture into its wholly owned subsidiary to stabilize supply and stay competitive.