CASTROL INDIA Leading the BS-VI change

Revealing its new BS-VI products specially formulated for the Indian market, Castrol India has reinforced its commitment in leading the change. Rajesh Rajgor speaks to the company’s Vice President (Marketing), Kedar Apte about the company’s approach to changing technologies across various segments

- Rajesh Rajgor

Over the last 100 years, Castrol India has been at the forefront of the Indian lubricant industry, recognised as a pioneer, innovator, and leader, besides being the only lubricant company which has had an uninterrupted presence in the country over this period, with three manufacturing plants located at Silvassa in Dadra Nagar Haveli, Patalganga in Maharashtra, and Paharpur in West Bengal. Together, the plants produce several million litres of lubricants with the ability to leverage additional capacities, which are outsourced to meet current and future needs. Thus, when it came to leap-frog from BS-IV to BS-VI, they were cognisant of how the OEMs were moving in terms of their engine technologies and were prepared with many formulations on account of their global presence.

Given the fact that the Indian road conditions and quality of fuel required was going to be different, Castrol India worked on reformulation to suit the lower SAPs with lighter lubricants’ requirement for India. Stringent technological efforts, over the past 18-24 months, propelled the company into re-launching their existing BS-IV products in the BS-VI form, while remaining competitive in a very cost-conscious market and maintaining durability in some very demanding driving conditions.

Commenting on this development, Kedar Apte, Vice President (Marketing), Castrol India, says: “Across all our categories we are ready with BS-VI products and these products are also largely backward compatible which means they can also be used for BS-IV engines.”