NLGI Member Spotlight

Company: Nynas Member Category: Supplier Address: PO Box 10700, SE-121 29 Stockholm, Sweden Website: http://www.nynas.com/ Contact Name: Dr. Valentina Serra-Holm Title: Marketing & Technology Director Telephone: +0046 602 12 00 Email: vase@nynas.com

We hope you’ll enjoy learning more about our long-time member Nynas. Located in Stockholm, Sweden, Nynas has shown a real commitment to innovation over it’s many years of operation. We’re proud to feature their company in this month’s edition of the NLGI Member Spotlight.

A Different Kind of Oil Company

In almost ninety years in the market, Nynas has been transformed from being a regular national oil company to a leading global corporation with a focus on specialty products.

Nynas business operations started back in 1928 with the construction of Sweden’s very first refinery. During the first few decades a large number of products were manufactured for the Swedish market, including petrol and heating oil, but the focus gradually shifted and Nynas special products are now sold in niche markets in all parts of the world. In contrast to most other oil companies, which use oil as a source of energy, the focus is on products with a long service life, which in many cases can also be recycled.

Nynas oils are all around us and in many cases they bring major benefits to society. These include products used in transformers and as binders in asphalt or sealing material. But the oils are also used in a number of other contexts – as components in adhesives, rubber soles, thermoplastic and graphical paint, as well as in lubricating greases metalworking fluids, hydraulic oils and other industrial lubricants, to name but a few examples.

The international focus is made possible by a global delivery network with regional hubs and a large number of local storage depots, including a recently opened depot in New Jersey, to further improve the service level and delivery performance for Nynas customers in North America. This makes it possible to deliver to virtually anywhere in the world. In addition to the global network of depots, ships and road tankers, Nynas has at its disposal sales offices in more than thirty countries as well as its own or associated refineries in Europe and America.

Its own biggest facilities are the refinery in Nynäshamn and the Harburg refinery just outside Hamburg, which was recently acquired from Shell. At the moment Harburg is being converted from being mainly a fuel refinery into a special refinery. Once all the renovations have been completed in early 2016, Nynas annual production capacity will have increased by 350,000 tons.

After decades of research and development work, primarily in the field of hydrogenation technology,

Nynas is now the leading international brand when it comes to naphthenic specialty oils (NSP). The other main product area is bitumen. Bitumen is used to bind the aggregate in asphalt layers, and also in certain industrial applications, for example roofing felt and corrosion protection.

Naphthenic specialty oils are used primarily in four segments – electrical industry, chemical industry, lubricants and tyre oils – where strict demands are made on the oil having high solubility and withstanding significant temperature differences. Demand is expected to increase primarily in Asia, South America and Africa with the process of industrialization and improvements in prosperity.

Nynas will capture extra growth due to the rapid ongoing restructuring of the global base oil markets. The traditional Group I base oil producers, many of which are located in Europe, face multiple challenges in the market. The main threat is the changing appetite within the dominant automotive engine oil segment, favouring base oils with no Sulphur, low viscosity and high viscosity index (VI). Scale of production, crude flexibility and product mix profitability are other factors.

Since Group I base oil properties such as high viscosity and high solvency remain crucially important for industrial lubricant manufacturers, this is a cause of great concern. It they cannot secure ample supply of Group I base oils , the will be forced to attempt to rapidly develop new formulation in more readily available base oils, such as Group II and Group II paraffinic base oils. Limitations in viscosity range and solvency (compared to Group I) will be a great challenge to overcome, and will not be realistic for many kinds of formulations.

But there is another alternative.

Nynas has developed a range of base oils, covering a wide viscosity interval, from 60 SUS to 4000 SUS, with properties and performance similar to Group I, which can therefore be used in existing lubricant production with a minimal need for reformulation. These new oils will be available on the global market in the long term.

Over the course of almost 90 years in the market, Nynas has managed to combine tradition with innovation while at the same time nurturing its heritage from having originally been an entrepreneur-driven family company. The longterm objective is, by means of continued, stable growth, to secure the company’s position as a leading global supplier of naphthenic speciality oils and a significant operator primarily in the field of upgraded products in the European bitumen market.

NLGI is proud to announce the introduction of the ‘NLGI Member Spotlight’, a new feature of the 2016 all-digital Spokesman magazine.

All NLGI members may take advantage of this opportunity to highlight your company’s history, global reach, vision, employees or whatever you’d like our readership to know about your company. You may talk about products & services, however, no competitor trade names may be used, nor mention of product pricing. of your headquarters, offices, plant & employee photos. We will accept articles for publication on a first received, first published basis. Contact Marilyn Brohm Marilyn@nlgi.org at NLGI if you would like to submit an article for possible publication in an upcoming issue.