Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. began selling lubricants in Myanmar, claiming its the first Indian oil marketing company to expand into the Southeast Asian nation.
The state-run company, which sells HP-branded lubricants, launched its products in the neighboring countrys commercial hubs of Yangon and Mandalay earlier this month, it noted. Having achieved the number one position in the domestic market, HP Lubricants sought to prove itself on foreign shores by venturing into Myanmar, the company said in a statement last week.
Myanmar has long been isolated from its neighboring countries in terms of free trade, a spokesman from a Singaporean oil exploration and production company, Interra Resources, told a lubricants industry conference in June 2016. As the country slowly transitions to democracy, its doors are opening to imported products, and its lubricants market is mushrooming.
The volume of Myanmars automotive lubricant market had a compound annual growth rate of about 18 percent from 2009 to 2013, reaching more than 60 million liters in 2013, said Sugi Handoko, Interras vice president, at last years ICIS Asia Base Oils & Lubricants Conference in Singapore.
HPCL operates Indias largest base oil refinery and produces over 300 lubricant products, specialty oils and greases. The company sells its lubricants through a network of 213 lube distributors and 14,412 retail outlets across India. It also has tie-ups with the Indian Navy and major original equipment manufacturers, including John Deere, Bajaj Auto, Komatsu, SKF and Bosch.
HPCLs lubricant sales totaled 583,000 metric tons in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017 – up approximately 9 percent from the year before, thanks to its focus on the bazaar segment and strong brand equity in the industrial segment, a spokesman told Lube Report Asia earlier this year. The company continued to be Indias top lube marketer for the fourth consecutive year, he added.