Cross Oil Refining and Marketing Inc. is best known as one of a dwindling number of naphthenic base oil refiners. Over the past five years, however, the Smackover, Ark., company has built a significant niche in the finished lubricant industry. That niche will get a platform for further growth next year with a 40,000-square-foot expansion of its packaging facilities and additional blending capacity.
The company said it is scheduled to install two high-speed filling lines – one for quarts, the other for pails – by February and that the new facilities will more than double its packaging capacity at Smackover. Cross is also installing three 120,000-gallon tanks for base oil storage and eleven 30,000-gallon blending tanks.
Officials said the company is growing by offering reliable industrial lubes at prices that are low, if not lowest. Cross primarily sells industrial lubricants such as hydraulic fluids to the farm, construction and logging industries.
We deal in the economy side of the business, where products are unpoliced, Director of Sales and Marketing Denman Shaffer told Lube Report. A packager can take anything they want, be it used motor oil or oil thats flushed from a factory, and they can put it in a pail and call it tractor hydraulic fluid, and there is no one to regulate that.
In contrast, Shaffer said, Cross uses its own base oil to make products that are certified for meeting ISO specifications. They are priced lower than major brands but slightly above the cheapest products in their category.
Were a bit more expensive than the lowest prices, so its been a struggle, but evidently people have been satisfied with the type of product were putting out, Shaffer said. We have sort of taken the high road in a real low-road business.
The expansion will double the physical size of Crosss blending and packaging plant in Smackover, although the increase in capacity will be larger proportionately. Last March, the company reopened a Kansas City, Kan., plant where it produces bulk lubricants, private-label products and windshield washer fluids. That plant had been mothballed since 2000 when Cross acquired it from Gard Corp. as part of its entry into the finished lubes business. The original 40,000-square-foot plant in Smackover was built to house those operations.
Shaffer said Cross probably is not finished growing. Eventually officials envision adding another 100,000 square feet that would allow the company to vacate a 115,000-square-foot warehouse that it leases in Camden, Ark., 20 miles north.
Our objective is to have [all Arkansas operations] located here at the Smackover facility, Shaffer said. But well probably continue to work toward that in 40,000-square-foot increments.
Crosss packaged lubricant division now employs 35 people. The companys base oil plant has capacity to make 4,500 barrels per day of naphthenic oils.