ROSENHEIM, Germany – Lubricant formulators have been pushed hard enough to improve product performance. Now theyll also have to worry about where their ingredients come from. So said Fuchs Petrolubs Lutz Lindemann, during an address to the OilDoc conference here last week. Demands for higher performance are spurring formulators to use new and higher numbers of ingredients, said Lindemann, a member of Fuchs Executive Board, but availability is increasingly restricted by a variety of factor...

NewMarket’s Afton Chemical additives subsidiary and Ashlands Valvoline division each reported strong increases in operating profit and revenue for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2012, compared to the year-earlier period. Afton turned a $71.6 million operating profit during 2012s fourth quarter, up 20.7 percent from $59.3 million in the year-earlier period. For the full year 2012, Afton reported a record $372 million in operating profit, up 20.2 percent from 2011. The petroleum additives seg...

Intertek has added a robotic sample-handling system to its lubricant testing and oil condition monitoring lab in Singapore. The robotic sample handling system used in Interteks Singapore OCM lab is the first of its kind deployed in Asia, Stacey Tylka, Interteks Southeast Asia managing director, told Lube Report. This reflects Interteks commitment to investing in the latest technologies to better support customers. Intertek started the oil condition monitoring (OCM) department about13 years ago...

Russian lube marketer Gazprom Neft-SM forged a technical and marketing partnership with the Chinese automaker Lifan, the energy giant said last week. The agreement covers Lifan operations in Russia, carried out by Lifan Motors Rus, the official distributor of Lifans Chinese cars in the country. “The collaboration began in July 2012, when [our] production was approved for factory fill of the new Lifan cars,” Gazprom Neft-SM said in a press release last week. “At the moment the...

Chem-Trend and Kluber Lubrication India, business units of Freudenberg Group, are building a regional technical center in Mysore, India, for their specialty lubricants. Freudenberg is investing 130 Rs. crores (U.S. $24 million) in Mysore, as the companys largest investment in the Asia-Pacific region. According to a recent company statement, it has erected the first buildings for the project, which was started in 2011. By 2016, when the project is scheduled for completion, the facility will pro...

U.S. markets have not changed much this week, while European markets look much the same as last week too. In that respect, Asia is also unchanged, but at least there is still a lot of activity out East. U.S. Gulf of Mexico Almost all the freight levels out of the U.S. Gulf are exactly the same as they were a week ago. U.S. Gulf-to-Far East is starting to see some large requirements for February, such as 20,000 tons of paraxylene to China, but nothing has been booked so far to indicate whether ...