German company Freudenberg Chemical Specialities KG yesterday opened a 200-million-yuan (US$28.14 million) plant for specialty lubricants in Shanghai.
The site, in Qingpu District, is designed for a maximum annual capacity of almost 13,000 metric tons of lubricants as well as release agents, or de-molding agents used to prevent the molded object from sticking to the surface of the mold.
Lube demand rose almost 50 percent between 1995 and 2005 in China, whose annual consumption of all types of lubricants is about four million to 4.5 million tons a year and ranked the world's second largest, the company said.
"Demand for high-quality lubricants and release agents has been rising for years in line with growth in major key industries in China," said President and Chief Executive Officer Hanno D. Wentzler.
Freudenberg Chemical supplies lubes to industrial customers rather than end users.
It had sales of 200 million yuan and 100 million yuan for lubricants and lease agents respectively in China in 2007.
Freudenberg Chemical is a unit of Freudenberg Group, a family company.
The group company expects to have sales of about 3.6 billion yuan in China last year, against 3.1 billion yuan for 2006, said Wentzler, who is also the Freudenberg Group's regional representative in China.
The group's accumulated investment in China will amount to 1.32 billion yuan this year, said Wentzler.