While most of Russian manufacturer Obninskorgsintezs production consists of antifreeze and car cleaning products, its growing lubricants business is now ranked one of the top five in Russia.
The 325,000 tons of fluid products that the company made in 2016 included about 220,000 tons of antifreeze and car cleaning products. However, the company is growing its lubricants business. In 2016 it produced 105,000 tons of lubricants, up from 82,000 tons produced in 2015.
Created in 1999, the company is now among the top five domestic lubricant makers in Russia, along with Lukoil, Rosneft, Gazprom Neft and Delfin Group.
In the past decade our company became the largest specialty automotive coolant and liquid producer in the country. Beside motor oils, we produce brake and transmission fluids, oil and air filters, and industrial reagents, Artem Avdeev, the companys marketing director, said during an interview last week. We are the largest independent lube maker in Russia, we have our own brands, and we also do toll blending for a number of other companies.
The company sells its coolants and motor oils under the Sintec brand.
Obninskorgsintez produces motor and transmission oils for a variety of vehicles. It has a large portfolio of synthetic and semi-synthetic products. Motor and transmission oils make up around 80 percent of our [lubricant] product portfolio. These products comprise a very large portion of the Russian market, where smaller blending companies can compete with the large lube marketers, price- and quality-wise, Avdeev said.
Photo courtesy of Obninskorgsintez
He also said the companys strong research and development, highly skilled distribution and sales force, and thorough audits annually made by the leading auditing firms in Europe, resulted in a company that is trusted by many western lubricant makers. We have long-lasting contracts for toll blending, distribution and co-branding under such brands as the Japanese JCI Co. and Takayama, as well as Rolf and other German and European brands. Also, our products are a factory fill choice for many car manufacturers, such as Avtovaz, Volkswagen, BMW, Kia, Hyundai, Peugeot-Citroen-Mitsubishi, Renault and Nissan, Avdeev said.
Obninskorgsintez produces antifreezes and specialty automotive liquids for Lukoil and Gazprom Neft.
We offer our customers a virtual supermarket of hundreds of types of products in the motor oil, car cleaning and fluid segments, in packaging that we also produce, Avdeev added. The companys management helps its customers choose strategies to develop their own formulations and choose the look of their own brand and form of packaging, as well as develop distribution channels for them.
In the past three years the company has pushed to expand in foreign markets by promoting its products abroad. The share of its lubricant products allocated for export is increasing, and it accounted for 30 percent of its total lubricant output in 2016. The rest, or 70 percent, was sold in Russia.
Our primary export markets are Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Libya, Palestine and Israel. We recently started to ship product to China too, and began to promote our products in India, Avdeev said. The company is also looking for ways to expand in Europe, Brazil and South Korea.
The hard times such as the economic crash and the ruble devaluation in the late 1990s, the great financial recession in 2008 and recession in Russia over the last couple of years have all given the company a sort of immunity and instinct for survival, Avdeev claimed.
Surprisingly, we have grown much faster during such a dramatic period of our recent history, he said. Calm times usually flatten the competitive advantages between companies. During tougher economic times, companies that implement a technological development strategy and exhibit leadership in efficiency and innovations are the winners, he said.