In 2011, to consolidate that success and as part of its strategy to expand in Central Asia, the company bought Chevrons 50.1 percent of the American-Uzbek joint venture. The enterprise was renamed UZ-Prista. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, it obviously included the condition that Prista would modernize the Fergana blending plant and undertake additional projects.

According to Pristas owner, Plamen Bobokov, the goals of the Uzbek-Bulgarian company included expanding the blending plants product portfolio to include synthetic and semisynthetic motor oils and to follow global trends for environmental protection and the use of renewable energy technologies. As it turns out, one of the companys new projects is a used oil processing facility to produce base oils.

The grand opening of Uz-Prista Recyclings complex for used oil processing took place in May, with the blessings of high-ranking political and business executives from both countries such as the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and Uzbekistans First Deputy Prime Minister Gulomzhan Ibrahimov. Plamen Bobokov was joined by his brother Atanas, both majority shareholders in Prista Oil.

The state effectively entered a business relationship with Prista Oil. In Central Asia, a region with pervasive despotic and authoritarian ruling systems, the only way to guarantee that any project gets off the ground is to gain approval at the highest levels of government. In this case, the UZ-Prista base oil rerefinery was authorized by a decree signed by late Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

In Uzbekistan, we have a very good partnership with Uzbekneftegaz in the production of lubricants through the Uz-Prista joint venture, Bobokov told LubesnGreases in an interview in November. This has encouraged us, together with our partner, to invest in Uz-Prista Recycling.

The company is banking on the potential of Uzbekistan and its neighbors. The landlocked country has five neighbors; three of them, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, total about 280,000 tons of lubricant demand annually, according to Bobokov. This is attractive enough. In addition to the 100,000 t/y of lube consumption within Uzbekistan, the total amount of usage is challenging and provides motivation to think about increasing the capacity of existing installations and making more investments.

Base Oil Rerefinery

When we visited the rerefinery site in November, it was an island of cleanliness in the midst of a dilapidated industrial zone in Angren, a dreary steppe town. The place is encircled by the barren hills of the Chatkai and Kurama mountain ranges, some 110 kilometers away from the capital of Tashkent and twice that far from Fergana refinery.

After years of economic decline and migration to the capital, Angren is now coming back to life. Neighboring the rerefinery is a Chinese initiative to revive a Soviet rubber production site.

The U.S. $15 million greenfield Uzbek-Bulgarian investment resulted in a recycling system with a capacity to process 43,000 tons of used oil annually. When we came here in the summer of 2013, we found a sun-scorched prairie field, home to snakes and scorpions. See how it looks now, said Georgi Barzov, Uz-Pristas head of rerefinery construction. Now, we have a state of the art recycling and refining installation with a spacious office building that houses a high-tech lab.

The used oil recycler features two columns, the distillation and hydrotreating units, a pump station, water heating facility, a condensation unit and the main office building, all secured by several robust firefighting outposts. It also has tanks that can store 11,000 tons of various types of feedstock and finished products. During our visit, operators at the loading and unloading docks were busy pumping tar into a truck cistern.

Total throughput capacity of the complex comprises 65 to 70 percent of API Group I and Group II base oils, 15 percent of tar and 10 percent of fuel oil, according to Chief Technologist Halimjan Rahmanov. The used oil recycling system has capacity to produce 30,000 tons of Group I base oils, 4,300 tons of fuel oil and 6,400 tons of tar, Rahmanov, said. The hydrotreating process started only recently, and at the moment, we are ready to ship around 400 tons of base oil products, he confirmed.

Rahmanov is one of the few employees dispatched by Uzbekneftegaz from Fergana refinery to train local operators in how to operate the rerefinerys control room and its overall processes. At our visit, the used oil recycling facility employed a staff of 36.

The used oil recycler uses vacuum distillation and hydrofinishing technology licensed from Indias Sequoia Global Inc. Sequoia specializes in supplying used lube oil, waste fuel or coolant recycling technologies. It has established clients in Australia, the U.S. and Argentina, and is in the process of establishing rerefining facilities in Brazil and the United Kingdom, the company told LubesnGreases.

Blending Plant

Currently, Uz-Pristas lubricant production complex in Fergana uses the refinerys Group I base oils. The 60,000 t/y blending plant plans to work with both Fergana refinery base oils and base oils produced in Angren, the company said. It also imports base stocks and additives for its semisynthetic and synthetic oils.

Maksim Lilov, Uz-Pristas general director, who oversees the blending plant, said that used oil recycling in Uzbekustan is an important step in utilizing waste oil in a region where used oil is dumped into waterways or landfills, or is used as fuel for heating. Uz-Prista Recycling products will be of a higher quality and will be used to produce high performance products, he said during an interview in his office overlooking the Tashkent business district. After the company entered Uzbekistan in 2011, we succeeded in stabilizing our revenues in a foreign currency market tightly controlled by the state. Our hard currency turnover is secured with substantial exports.

In 2015, Uz-Prista sold about 40 percent of its finished lubricant production in export markets; the rest is consumed in the domestic market. The companys main export destinations are Hungary, Ukraine, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan, India and China.

Now we are concentrating on high performance products while keeping up with the fighting grade API SF or API SG oils used in the Soviet or post-Soviet made cars, equipment and machinery that are still running in the region, Lilov said. We participate with somewhere between 5 to 10 percent share in the total lubricant market in Uzbekistan, he confirmed.

In the country, Uz-Prista markets a line of Prista-branded motor oils, Lubricol industrial oils and Texaco brand motor, hydraulic and gear oils. Major lube brands such as Shell and Mobil hold a substantial share of the automotive lube market in Uzbekistan.

Look to the Future

Pristas strategic plan is to expand in Central Asia and Russia as well as in North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Far East Asia, according to Bobokov. In most of these markets, we plan to export finished lubricants. We are also in negotiations with several local companies on different forms of cooperation, including construction of a modern blending plant, using our newest proprietary blending technology.

Back home in Bulgaria, Prista operates a 110,000 t/y blending plant located in Ruse, a city on the Danube River, and a grease production plant named Verila Lubricants, located in the capital of Sofia. The grease plant is a modernized Communist-era lubricant production site that was reopened at the end of 2014. Verila activities are extremely diverse – production, research, engineering and development in the field of greases and a variety of other industry specialties, Bobokov said.

In 2015, the company produced 61,300 tons of lubricating materials, of which 97 percent were finished lubricants and 3 percent greases. Around 30 percent of the volume was sold in Bulgaria and the rest in export markets. Pristas 2015 lubricant sales totaled 85 million.