Russian independent lubricant maker Cupper plans to build a lubricant blending plant in Dzershinsk, in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod oblast.
The project was announced at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum held last month, where the Cupper’s general director, Leila Alieva, and Gleb Nikitin, governor of the region, signed an agreement for cooperation in an investment project.
The 510 million rubles (U.S. $8.1 million) project will construct a factory with capacity to make 20,000 tons per year of finished lubricants and greases. The engineering company that will design the plant has not yet been chosen, but officials said the plant will start operating at the end of 2023.
“The plant will be built on a 2,000 square meters land plot in Dzershinsk’s economic district of Kulybin, and production will be focused on industrial lubricants and greases,” Sergey Mamykin, owner of Cupper, told Lube Report on Tuesday. He added that the company intends to offer a wide range of industrial lubricants such as compressor oils, marine lubricants and hydraulic fluids.
Last month, it started to test lubes it has produced for Valdai 45R hydrofoils manufactured in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Hydrofoils are passenger speed boats that lift above the water level when traveling at high speeds.
Mamykin said the company is actively promoting itself as a new player on the Russian lubricant market. At an industrial exhibition taking place this week, it released a new grease is currently being tested by Russian Railways.
Cupper Group is a Russian startup in the lubricants sector created in 2020. Currently, it has two small production facilities and a lab located in Moscow and the Moscow oblast. Its lubricant and grease products are formulated with proprietary copper additives.
“We are not buying [imported] additives,” Mamykin said during an interview. “We produce them using our propriety technology CLAD, or Cuprum Lining Antiwear Defense.”
He said that Cupper uses its copper additives instead of popular popular antiwear additives based on chemistries such as sulfur, phosphorus, zinc, calcium and magnesium. He added that the copper additives are non-toxic to the environment and biodegradable.
Mamykin added that, because they are dissolved copper salts, Cupper’s additives do not need to rely on high alkalinity to preserve oxidative stability, as some chemistries do.
According to the company’s records of formation and ownership in SPARK-Interfax database, Dmitry Privalov and Elena Kolosova hold 54% and 16% of the company shares respectively, while Sergey Mamykin holds 8.5%.