Tide Water looking to expand into Mexican market

Tide Water Oil is looking to set up a subsidiary in Mexico to sell its lubricants in the Latin American market.
“We are seriously looking at the Latin American market for which the company is planning to set up a subsidiary in Mexico,” Chairman of Tide Water Oil, Kallol Datta, said. The company is scouting for a local partner for that purpose.
Tide Water Oil, which manufactures lubricants under the Veedol brand, has a market share of 5% in the OEM segment and 7.5% in the retail segment in India. The company acquired the Veedol brand from BP subsidiary Castrol in October 2011.
“Acquisition of the Veedol brand from Castrol Lubricants and Lubricants UK Limited [will] help us in consolidating the company’s presence in those countries,” Datta said.
Veedol will be re-introduced in European markets like Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
“We are going to those geographies where Veedol had good salience in the past…. For the European market, our sourcing would be done from the Netherlands where we have set up a subsidiary. Hopefully, we will be making our first sales in Europe in September-October,” said Tide Water’s managing director R. N. Ghosal.
Despite such a global presence with good brand recall, Veedol had been languishing as BP had invested little in advertising and marketing over the past seven to eight years. This has made Tide Water’s relaunch effort a difficult proposition.
“We are not in a hurry to regain our lost markets. Veedol has also some brand equity in the Middle East and Latin America which will help give us some headway in re-entering those markets and slowly getting back the market share it once enjoyed,” said Datta.
Tide Water opened a subsidiary in Dubai called Veedol International DMCC in February 2012, to serve the Middle East and African markets. The Dubai arm has already broken even and has appointed country distributors in the UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen.
“Last fiscal [year], it did a business of USD7 million. This fiscal [year], we plan to double it,” said Ghosal at Tide Water’s annual general meeting in August.
Veedol entered the South African market in July and trade enquiries were received from Taiwan and Myanmar. “We are also considering appointing brand franchisees in geographies like Canada and Latin America,” said Ghosal.
In other news, Tide Water Oil is likely to sell a half acre of land at the industrial town of Oragadam on the outskirts of Chennai where it has a warehouse.
Tide Water Oil Company is a part of the multi-divisional Andrew Yule group that has diverse interests in engineering, electrical, tea cultivation, power generation, digital communication systems, and lubricants.
Veedol and its sub-brands Prima, Turbo and Take Off cater to diesel engines, two-wheelers, tractors, earth-moving equipment, hydraulic machinery, and industrial and automotive greases.
Tide Water also sells lubricants under the brand Eneos, which is licensed from JX Nippon Oil and Energy Corp of Japan.
(August 19, 20, 2013)