It has mostly been a week of further slippage in some U.S. routes and sideways movements in Europe and Asia. U.S. Gulf It has not exactly been a busy week on the route to the Far East. Products such as styrene failed to show. Evidently, supplies are tight in the U.S. Gulf in September and selling prices are too high to effect any transactions. Lower freight might help, temporarily, but then the whole game of cat and mouse between owner and charterers would restart. As it is, rates in the low $40...

Several key trends in the lubricants and base oils industry as well as a slowing local economy are causing the Brazilian market to experience a decline in demand, and producers, suppliers and distributors will have to make adjustments, an official from consultancy LubeKem forecast. Claudio Pereira, director of So Paulo-based LubeKem, said demand for finished lubricants in Brazil declined by 11 percent between 2013 and 2015, from 1.4 million metric tons per year to 1.2 million t/y. Pereira spoke ...

The Tanzanian Bureau of Standards shut down a lubricants manufacturer and confiscated substandard, counterfeit lubricants from distributors as a result of market surveillance and inspection efforts in the African countrys Ilala and Temeke districts. TBS Public Relations Officer Rhoida Andusamile confirmed to a reporter that the bureau seized 21,587 liters of lubricating oil from distributors and shut down Temeke Battery and Lubricants, for manufacturing substandard, counterfeit lubricants in the...

FORT WORTH, Texas – Grease manufacturer Texas Refinery Corp. will hold the grand opening ceremony for its new production facility in Mansfield, Texas, this week. On Sept. 9, ninety-four years to the day of the Fort Worth-based firms 1922 launch, TRC will celebrate the official commencement of its revamped grease, lubricants and specialty chemicals manufacturing base some 20 miles from its headquarters. During a tour of the companys campus,President and CEO Chris Pate told Lube Report that ...

Russian police shut down a business in an old warehouse in Togliatti, Samara Oblast, last week that allegedly manufactured counterfeit motor oils of popular brands. The investigative committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Togliatti said the facility unlawfully manufactured and sold fake lubricants worth 800,000 rubles (U.S. $13,000). In its Sept. 2 news release, the police said the suspected organizers used plastic canisters of different sizes and labeled them with popular motor oil b...