From a Lubrizol Additives standpoint, we have historically had distributors, but they were all outside of North America, Jon Ridgway, global business manager for metalworking, told Lube Report. Sea-Land will be distributing to relatively small customers, strictly within North America.

This is all about providing superior service to our customers, Ridgway said. Sea-Land has eight warehouses around North America, so they are able to supply [additives] very quickly. What weve chosen to do is to try and better serve a certain segment of customers, by employing Sea-Land to represent us just for industrial additives, which includes additives used for hydraulic fluids, industrial gear oils, turbine oils and metalworking fluids.

Sea-Lands close proximity to Lubrizol in the Cleveland area of Ohio was also appealing, he said. Lubrizol transferred its metalworking additives business from Spartanburg, S.C., to its Wickliffe, Ohio, headquarters in the third quarter of 2009.

We were also looking for a distributor where there was minimal overlap with competitive producers, Ridgway said.

We try really hard not to offer [competing] chemistries to our customers, Joseph Clayton, president of Sea-Land Chemical, told Lube Report. We are very exact on the territories we cover and on the product lines.