UAE-based oil & gas company, Gulf Petrochem, is drilling deeper into the Indian market with a series of new ventures and investments. Its subsidiary, GP Petroleums, entered today into a strategic partnership with Spain's leading petrochemical company, Repsol.
The partnership is to manufacture Repsol's motor lubricants in India. This will allow GP Petroleum gain a stronger foothold in the automotive oil space, where it current has a sub 1 percent market share.
Separately, Gulf Petrochem has also outlined a capex of more than Rs 1,000 crore, which would be invested in several greenfield and brownfield ventures.
In an interaction with CNBC-TV18, Thangapandian Srinivasalu, ED, Gulf Petrochem, outlined the company's strategy.
Excerpts from the conversation on CNBC-TV18.
Q: What are your India plans?
A: To start with, in the lubricant space we will be expanding our blending facility. We are putting up a new plant at Pipavav which is very close to our recently-commissioned Pipavav terminal. At Kosi, we have plans to put up bitumen value-added plant where we will be manufacturing CRMB, PMB and bitumen emulsions.
We also have ideas to expand our bitumen footprints by acquiring a plant in southern part of the country and in the eastern part of the country. So, hopefully we should be able to fulfill our requirement by having four five bitumen plants in the country in the next 12- 18 months.
On the terminal side other than Pipavav we are looking at other opportunities to look at either acquiring or developing in Greenfield terminals in the country because we are very active in bunkering and the terminals will not only support our trading activity, it will also support our bunkering business.
We are also in the process of looking at a bio-ethanol plant in the northern states of either Punjab or Haryana, the studies are on. We have a very well established technology which we have seen in northern part of Europe which we plan to bring it as joint venture into this country. Hopefully in next 8-9 months we should be able to make the announcement and then have the financial closure by middle of next year and then start.
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