German waste oil rerefiner Puraglobe closed its finished lubricant blending plant in Tampa, Florida, last year and exited the site, releasing an unspecified number of employees in the process, Lube Report confirmed this week.
A spokesman, who declined to be named, said Puraglobe maintains a downsized operation in the United States and is still pursuing a long-running effort to develop a used lubricant rerefinery there.
“As part of our strategy, we’re prioritizing rerefined base oil production,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified. “We continue to look for opportunities to grow our RRBO business in the U.S.”
The Tampa blending plant opened in 2020 and has mainly provided contract blending services for other lubricant marketers. Puraglobe, which is headquartered in Elsteraue, Germany, but majority owned by U.S. private equity firms Junction Energy Capital and Ara Partners Group, has not issued previous public statements about the closing.
Puraglobe’s main business is rerefining used lubricants to produce lubricating base stocks and other by-products. It operates a rerefinery in Elsteraue that produces API Group II and III base stocks.
For more than a decade the company has worked to develop a rerefinery in the U.S. In 2016, it announced an agreement to partner with NexLub to complete a rerefinery that NexLub had begun developing but been unable to complete at Port Tampa Bay, Florida. The project later came under Puraglobe’s sole possession, and in 2022 the company said it had completed engineering and begun construction of the rerefinery and aimed to open it by the end of 2024. The company has not commented on the project since.
In August 2024, Puraglobe announced it had contracted an engineering firm to build what it referred to as its fourth rerefinery, referencing different parts of its Elsteraue operations as the first three plants. Officials declined at that time to say if the announcement referred to the long-running Tampa project or to disclose a timeline or other details such as capacity. There have not been further comments about that project.