JEDDAH: Fuchs Lubricants is formulating its production to meet the growing demand of the emerging industry of electric vehicles, as the car manufacturing sector will soon rely lesser on traditional lubricants.
“Electric vehicles are an industry that is going to happen, and Fuchs in Germany has taken steps to counter this with producing batteries and EV charging related products,” said Yasser Al-Qusami, vice president of sales, Fuchs Saudi Arabia.
Fuchs today is a solutions provider for EV batteries with manufacturing operations in 35 countries and service capabilities in every industrialized country worldwide.
According to a statement, EV-formulated lubricants will be a crucial generator of revenues for the company.
According to Al-Qusami, the company is still recovering from the pandemic’s consequences, as the company’s sales in the Kingdom are currently 11 percent behind pre-pandemic levels.
“It will take at least another three years before we reach there. A lot of medium to small companies have become smaller, and their consumption of lubricants is not as before. Still, with the flow of the new projects in the Kingdom, they will go back to the original size, and we will be able to cater to their needs,” Al-Qusami told Arab News on the sidelines of a conference on base oils and lubricants held in Jeddah recently.
“Now we are in a more or less stable situation. The market has slightly grown compared to the last four years. We have been able to maintain our market share, and we have been able to grow in some small areas,” he added.
Fuchs Saudi Arabia is among the top three lubricants providers in the Kingdom, a market that contributes the most business in the Middle East, according to Al-Qusami.
“Saudi Arabia is the main Fuchs affiliate in the Middle East. We are the main shareholders of Fuchs’s income in this region,” he said.
The Kingdom hosted the 17th Independent Commodity Intelligence Services, Middle Eastern Base Oils and Lubricants Conference at The Ritz-Carlton Jeddah from Oct. 10-11.
This year’s edition was the first to be held in Saudi Arabia, driven by ICIS’s desire to capitalize on the wave of growth that the Kingdom’s thriving base oil and lubricants industry has enjoyed in recent years.