Saudi Aramco Base Oil – Luberef signs MoU with APAR Industries

Saudi Aramco Base Oil Company – Luberef has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with India’s APAR Industries Limited to consider building a facility to produce transformer oils at the Lubricant Value Park in Saudi Arabia.

The MOU was signed by Tareq AlNuaim, president and CEO of Lubref, Kushal Desai, chairman and managing director of Apar Industries.

Launched in 2020, the “LubeHub” is similar in concept to Singapore’s Lube Park, which will benefit from the Yanbu ecosystem, a global refining hub and the future home of the Saudi Aramco-SABIC crude oil-to-chemicals plant. 

The LubeHub’s strategy is to support localization for the production of speciality oils in Saudi Arabia. The LubeHub is located at the Red Sea city of Yanbu.

In Yanbu, Luberef can directly pipe base oil from its two refineries. A wide range of incentives are available to potential investors, including financing, trade and employment incentives. Luberef is enticing investors to locate their manufacturing facilities for finished lubricants, transformer oils, metalworking fluids, white oils, rubber process oils, drilling fluids, and lubricant additives at the LubeHub.

Apar Industries is the third largest transformer oil manufacturer in the world, according to its website. The company has the largest market share of transformer oils in the Saudi Arabian market, it said. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, the company was founded by the late Shri Dharamsinh D. Desai in 1958 as Power Cables Pvt. Ltd, to manufacture power transmission conductors. Today, the company has three business units: conductors, cables and lubricants.