Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. reported that its lubricant sales declined 12% in fiscal year 2021-2022 as it dealt with constraints that included availability of product supplies pursuant to a planned turnaround at its base oil plant in Mumbai.
Owned by India’s central government, the company said in its latest annual report that its overall lubricant sales volume declined to 545,200 metric tons for the fiscal year ending March 31, compared to 619,600 tons in the prior fiscal year, and 14% below 633,170 tons for the fiscal year ended March 2020.
The company operates six lubricant blending plants. HPCL said that it improved operational efficiencies at its lube blending plants with infrastructure augmentation, automation and other solutions.
The Mumbai-based company’s lubes business supplies lubricants and greases to private and government-owned industrial customers, as well as to a network of 274 lube distributors and 20,025 retail outlets, many of them in the bazaar market. That’s down from 280 lube distributors but up from 18,634 retail outlets at the end of the prior fiscal year that ended in March 2021. Digitalization opened up new opportunities for cost optimization for the lubricants business and improved delivery of services, the company noted.
HPCL’s base stock plant in Mumbai – owned jointly with Oil and Natural Gas, which has a 51.1% controlling stake – makes API Groups I, II and III base stocks. It is the largest base oil plant in India.