Fees for the American Petroleum Institutes Engine Oil Licensing and Certification System increased Dec. 1 in order to offset the costs of APIs consumer education campaign and new standard implementation.
Under the revised EOLCS fee structure:
- the license application fee rose from $4,000 to $4,500;
- the license renewal fee rose from $4,000 to $4,500;
- the fee renewing companies pay based on oil sales volume remains the same at $0.007 per gallon.
Licenses issue at this time will be valid through March 31, 2018. With this license, companies have the right to use API quality marks, like the API Service Symbol donut and the API Certification starburst, on oil packages and promotional materials and in media.
The minor price increase will help us continue our consumer education campaign; manage the implementation of SN Plus (if approved), GF-6 and API SP; and increase the number of engine oil samples that we collect and test through the API Aftermarket Audit Program, said Kevin Ferrick, senior manager of APIs EOLCS.
As of last week, 788 companies with over 16,118 products were listed in the EOLCS directory. Ferrick expects the number of API licensed products to increase in coming years, particularly if SN Plus is implemented. Licensed SN Plus products would appear separately on licenses – a marketer wont be able to just add the designation to a licensed product – so the approval of the designation would naturally lead to an increase in licensed brands, noted Ferrick.
North America is still the largest region at 355 licenses, but Asia-Pacific continues to grow. Today there are 202 licenses in the Asia-Pacific region, said Ferrick in an interview.
Roughly 44 percent of the companies are from North America, 27 percent operate in Asia-Pacific and 5 percent come from Europe, according to numbers from the EOLCS directory.