Royal Purple recently expanded its lubricant manufacturing facility with the addition of a new 10-tank, 300,000-gallon tank farm for bulk raw materials. Marketing Vice President Mark McFann told Lube Report the tank farm is set up to ultimately hold 32 storage tanks and a total capacity of 960,000 gallons. The construction of the new tank farm began in June 2006 and was completed in January 2007, McFann said. The expansion was necessary to meet the growing demand on both the industrial and consu...

Champion Brands LLC yesterday announced the opening of itsbrake fluid blending and packaging division, which the company claims makes it the largest exporter of brake fluid in the United States. The new venture adds high-volume brake fluid blending to its existing packaging business, which includes the Champion brand and many private labels, and dedicates about 500,000 gallons of storage to brake fluid blending and storage. Champion Brands is a blender, packager and marketer of fuels, lubricants...

Val Pakis, who served as president and chief executive officer of D.A. Stuart Co. from 2000 until March 2006, has rejoined Lubrizol Corp. as vice president for driveline and industrial additives. Pakis will focus on continued organic growth as well as merger and acquisition activity, the company announced yesterday. He also will be responsible for Lubrizols equipment manufacturer liaison group. D.A. Stuart, Warrenville, Ill., supplies metalworking fluids and other specialty process chemicals to ...

United Fuel & Energy Corp. on March 1 announced it will acquire the assets of Reamax Oil Co., a lubricants and fuel distributor based in Camp Verde, Ariz., for an undisclosed amount, opening a newgeographic market for the Texas-based distributor. United Fuel is a distributor of lubricant, gasoline, diesel and propane products to customers in the rural markets of Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. It sells wholesale lubricants and fuel to commercial customers. The company has 20 branch location...

Lubricants supplier Quaker Chemical Corp. on Feb. 27reported fourth quarter sales of $115.5 million, up 7.8 percent from $107.1 million in 2005s fourth quarter. Net income reached $3 million, up from a net loss of $5.4 million a year earlier. For the year 2006, Conshohocken, Pa.-based Quaker Chemicalshowed record sales of $460.5 million, up 8.6 percent from the prior years $424 million. Net income for the year reached $11.7 million, compared to $1.7 million in 2005. The company said foreign exch...

Lanxess chemicals group has begun construction of a new manufacturing plant for lubricant additives in Qingdao, China. The production facility, which will be operated by the companys Rhein Chemie subsidiary, is scheduled to go onstream by the fourth quarter of 2008 and will initially employ 50 people. Leverkusen, Germany-based Lanxess valued its investment in the single-digit million Euro range. At the new facility Rhein Chemie will manufacture light-colored sulfurized additives for lubricants,...

LONDON – Increasingly stringent environmental regulations will continue in coming years to raise performance demands for automotive engine oils in Europe, an official with Lubrizol Corp. told an industry conference here recently. In a presentation at the ICIS World Base Oils Conference, Alison Fisher, Lubrizols Derby, U.K.-based global business manager for heavy duty engine oils, said inter-industry standards for both heavy duty and passenger car engine oils face significant upgrades in th...