Savita Oil Aims To Make Ester Oil Affordable For Masses, Says Chairman
Its Ester-5 range of lubricants are biodegradable and has scope in aviation, railways and automotive sectors, it said.
Savita Oil Technologies Ltd. aims to bring down India’s import dependence on Ester oil for sensitive sectors like aviation and railways, with its launch of Ester-5 lubricants range.
The company, that has 11% market share in the Indian lubricant oil space, also plans to make the premium product range affordable for its existing mass market two-wheeler and four-wheeler customers.
It claims the Ester-5 range of lubricants are biodegradable as they are made from coconut and soya oil and are used in sensitive sectors such as aviation, electric railways and EV space, with zero failure demand from products.
There is tremendous scope and potential for growth for Ester-5 lubricants in the aviation (jet engines), railways, automotive—conventional and EV space—data centers, construction equipment, renewables (floating solar and wind gear boxes) space, Gautam N Mehra, chairman and managing director of Savita Oil Technologies, told NDTV Profit.
“We are working on multiple areas where our current focus is on motorcycle and passenger oil products. We plan to launch commercial vehicle oil with Ester in it by next year and targeting the transformer oil sector, where Ester is an important insulation fuel,” Mehra said.
The company is working with some of the largest transformer manufacturers and has received order approvals from several transformer manufacturers—Indian and international—for supplies, where supplies have begun, he said.
The manufacturer of automotive and industrial lubricants expects that, with electrification of Indian Railways and inclusion of trains such as Vande Bharat as well as dynamic on-board transformers, the requirement for dynamic high-performance fluid is very high. “Indian Railways is currently using 100% Ester oil for these trains. We hope to get approval for supplies from Indian Railways very soon,” Mehra said.
Savita Oil, at present, has close to 2,000 metric tonne per annum of Ester-5 production capacity, that it plans to double to 4,000 metric tonne by the end of the year, he said.
Middle East Crisis Impact
The company, that has crude oil dependence in terms of raw material for its lubricant oil products, sees the impact of the Middle-East crisis in two ways—first, the crude oil price has become volatile, and secondly, the freight rates have gone up substantially.
“The bigger problem has been the increase in freight rates by three to fourfold, that has impacted our exports to Europe. We hope the Middle East crisis is a temporary phase and will pass soon,” Mehra said.
However, production of Ester oil will not be impacted since the raw material imports mostly happen from Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, he said.