State-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina launched the first shipment of its automotive lubricants to Switzerland and South Africa on Thursday as part of the company’s campaign to further expand its lubricant market into Europe and Africa after successfully marketing the lubricant products to Australia and several major Asian countries.
The firm shipped two containers or 32,000 litres of its products including Fastron Series, Prima XP and Mesran via Genova port in Italy to Lugano, Switzerland, Pertamina’s vice president of lubricants Supriyanto Dwi Hutomo said on the sidelines of the ceremony marking the first shipment in Jakarta.
Pertamina teamed up with Lugano-based Indonaldini Group to start promoting its products in Switzerland, Supriyanto said, adding the firm would take advantage of the surge in demand in Europe for “high-quality products with affordable price”.
“We picked Switzerland for its excellence in terms of taxes and customs duties. In addition, the marketing staff there generally mastered four languages - English, German, Italian and French, which would ease the promotion of our brands to other European countries,” he told reporters.
Pertamina’s overseas marketing manager Redesmon Munir said he was “optimistic” that the current European crisis would not really affect the company’s plan to expand its lubricant business to the region.
While acknowledging that its brands would face tough competition from larger lube producers such as Dutch-based Shell, English-based Castrol and France’s Total in Switzerland, Redesmon expected more competitive prices, Pertamina’s brands would win the heart of the customers.
“Take the Fastron Series’ brand for example, which we usually sell at around US$7 per litre in Indonesia. While its prices in Europe will be higher, we will set the sales prices lower than those of Shell’s or Castrol’s for example,” Redesmon said.
Separately, Indonaldini’s vice president Eriberto Naldini said his company would help promote Pertamina’s lubricant sales in Switzerland, but declined to go into detail over the firm’s strategy just yet.
He added, however, that customers who drive Italian scooters were likely to be one of the target sales for Pertamina’s lubricants.
“We expect the delivery for Pertamina’s lubricant products to Switzerland to reach 24 containers of automotive lubricants per year in the near future,” he said.
The lubricant market potential for Western Europe is estimated to be 5.2 million kilolitres annually, with 46 per cent of the total figure dominated by automotive lubricants, while the rest include industry lubricants, marine lubricants and mining lubricants, according to Pertamina.
The company also announced on Thursday that it had shipped one container of its lubricant products, which included Fastron Synthetic, Mesran and Meditran SX 15W-40 with a total volume of 12,000 litres to Cape Town, South Africa.
Supriyanto said Pertamina teamed up with Cape Town-based National Plasterer group to promote its lubricant products in the capital as well as western parts of South Africa. The country, he said, has a total population of 2.1 million vehicles with potential demand of lubricants reaching 300 to 400 million kilolitres per year.
“The growth in demand for lubricants in Africa has reached 2.6 per cent per year with current market potential of 1.8 million kilolitres annually. We hope that by entering South Africa, we can pave way to promote our products to other African countries such as Nigeria, Morocco and Egypt,” he said.
Pertamina has been expanding its lubricant business globally, evidenced by its export growth that has so far reached 30 percent compared to last year.
In the first half of 2012, Pertamina exported 110,000 kilolitres of lubricants, principally to Japan, China and the United Arab Emirates. Pertamina’s exports in the first half were 62 per cent of the firm’s whole-year target of 180,000 kilolitres.
Previously, Pertamina announced its plan to spin off its lubricant business unit into a new subsidiary, which would be called PT Pertamina Lubricants. The new subsidiary is expected to be officially launched in December this year.
Post a Comment
Post a Comment