JX Nippon Oil & Energy announced a 50-50 joint venture with Tide Water Oil to manufacture and market lubricants in India.
The joint venture, JX Nippon TWO Lubricants India, is scheduled to be set up in September, JX Nippon said this week in a news release. The new company will be based in Gurgaon, Haryana province, in northern India, and will be seeded with capital of about 2 billion (U.S. $19.7 million). It will focus on supply of factory fill lubricants for Japanese and Indian automotive manufacturers and sales of JX Nippons Eneos brand of lubricants.
A member of the Andrew Yule Group, Kolkata-based Tide Water Oil has been marketing Eneos lubricants through a technical collaboration with Japans largest lubricant supplier, JX Nippon Oil & Energy, since 1993. It is a major supplier of lubricants for leading two-wheeler companies in India like Hero MotoCorp, Honda and Yamaha as well as other Japanese OEMs such as Kobelco Construction Equipment and Kubota. The joint venture will continue with the technical collaboration, combining the technical expertise of JX Nippon with Tide Water Oils distribution strength in India.
When the companies announced a preliminary agreement for the joint venture in February, they said the cooperation would also extend to Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan.
JX Nippon will now have 27 marketing ventures. The company said overseas lubricant sales now amount to 500, 000 kiloliters per year,and it expects sales to increase to 900,000 kl/y by 2020 as a result of its overseas expansions.