Kunlun Lubricant: From the Golden Decade to the Green-Gold Decade (2012-03-22)

In the field of refined oil products, lubricants were the earliest market to open up during China's reform from a planned economy to a socialist market economy, and lubricants are also the oil product with the highest market maturity and the fiercest competition. In this most competitive market, PetroChina Lubricant Company took ten years to build Kunlun Lubricant from nothing into a leading national brand, leading the industry into a golden decade of rapid development. In the new historical period, Kunlun Lubricant has put forward the professional concept of rational lubrication, committing itself to promoting the transformation of lubrication concepts and methods across the whole industry, which not only lays a solid foundation for the company's development over the next ten years but also leads the industry into the era of green lubrication.

Strong integration driving ten years of rapid development in the lubricant market
In 2000, China National Petroleum Corporation, having just entered the new century, made a decisive choice to integrate its more than ten lubricant production units belonging to different refining and chemical enterprises and establish PetroChina Lubricant Company, implementing the operating strategy of unified resource allocation, unified product standards, unified network layout, unified price management and unified organization of scientific research, with strength concentrated on launching a famous brand. From then on, PetroChina Lubricant Company opened the curtain on brand integration and led the lubricant industry into a period of rapid development known as the golden decade.

At the end of 2001, PetroChina Lubricant Company launched the Kunlun brand. In April 2002, the products entered the market. By the end of 2003 it had achieved a packaged oil sales target of 600,000 tonnes, double that of the previous year; brand strength increased greatly and a strategic turning point was achieved. In 2005, the Tian series products, including Kunlun Tianyuan, Kunlun Tianrun and Kunlun Tianjiao, were officially launched, and PetroChina Lubricant Company formally completed the full integration of its brands and products.

In brand promotion, Kunlun made many bold moves. In October 2003, along with the launch of the Shenzhou V spacecraft, PetroChina Lubricant Company bought up the Shenzhou V advertising slot on China Central Television and forcefully launched Kunlun Lubricant advertising. It also exclusively sponsored the Athens Olympic Games gold medal tally. In 2004-2005, Kunlun Lubricant successively sponsored two top-level domestic events, the Antarctic scientific expedition and the China Off-road Championship, crossing the test of both ice and fire: it conquered the low-temperature limit of nearly minus 50 degrees Celsius at the Dome A point on the Antarctic ice sheet and also conquered the high-temperature limit of the vast desert and gobi. Especially in the 2005 China Off-road Championship, the outstanding performance of Kunlun Tianyuan, a high-grade lubricant newly developed and supplied by Kunlun Lubricant to the competing vehicles, further demonstrated the local adaptability of national lubricants; the excellent quality of Kunlun Lubricant was also favored by consumers, and market performance soared.

Over the ten years, through an active market response strategy, Kunlun Lubricant achieved a splendid transformation from being mainly engaged in raw material operations and bulk oil to leading in R&D and brand operations, and achieved brilliant results in competing with well-known domestic and foreign lubricant brands; Kunlun Lubricant has become a brand known at home and abroad, with rapidly rising awareness and reputation. Led by well-known brands such as Kunlun Lubricant, China's lubricant industry achieved blowout development over the past ten years, maintaining rapid growth of nearly 10 percent almost every year. National brands, in a situation where the high-end lubricant market had long been monopolized by foreign brands, also carved out a bloody path and successfully occupied a place of their own.

Rational lubrication leading the industry into the green-gold decade
Along with the rapid development of the lubricant market, China has now become the world's second-largest lubricant producer and consumer, consuming more than 15 percent of the world's lubricants and nearly 40 percent of its greases. Industry experts point out that the growth of lubricant production and sales represents, on the one hand, the rapid growth of market demand, and on the other hand, the waste and irrational lubrication that exist in the lubricant industry cannot be ignored. In the new historical period, the rapid progress of the automotive industry and the development of energy conservation, emission reduction and the low-carbon economy have also set new requirements for the future development of the lubricant industry, making it urgent to drive the industry toward green, energy-saving development.

As a leading brand in the lubricant industry, Kunlun Lubricant has in recent years based itself on consumer needs, insisted on advocating the oil-use concepts of rational oil use and rational lubrication, called for maintenance instead of repair, and been committed to promoting professional lubrication concepts. In 2010, in order to guide and standardize the scientific and rational selection of lubricants by automotive enterprise designers, maintenance personnel and end users, PetroChina Lubricant Company and the Society of Automotive Engineers of China jointly compiled the Commercial Vehicle Lubrication Guidelines. The publication of these guidelines filled the gap in China whereby technicians engaged in commercial vehicle production and maintenance, as well as commercial vehicle users, had no scientific basis for correctly selecting lubricants, and pioneered the practice of academia leading technical specifications. At present, the Society of Automotive Engineers of China is organizing the formulation of lubrication guidelines for passenger vehicles, which are being compiled by PetroChina Kunlun Lubricant Company; the release of these guidelines will also greatly advance the popularization and promotion of the concepts of scientific oil use and rational oil use among passenger vehicle users.

In addition, Kunlun Lubricant has always taken supporting China's automotive industry and providing vehicles with the best lubricating products as an important business philosophy, relying on the two major R&D centers in Dalian and Lanzhou to promote the formation of scientific achievements with independent intellectual property rights and progress in energy-saving and environmentally friendly lubricant technologies, achieving many innovations including the development of the alkyl salicylate series of products with independent intellectual property rights and energy-saving and environmentally friendly features, and bringing high-grade energy-saving lubricant series such as Kunlun Tianyuan and Tianrun to the market. The project Preparation Technology and Industrial Application of Extreme-Pressure Anti-wear Additives and Additive Packages for Gear Oils even rewrote the history of gear oil additives being long monopolized by foreign companies, and won the second prize of the National Technology Invention Award.

From the company's founding in 2000 to the successful integration of its brands, breaking through the encirclement and achieving rapid development of the Kunlun Lubricant brand, PetroChina Lubricant Company has over the past decade led the lubricant industry in achieving rapid development, and when the industry faces green transformation, PetroChina Lubricant Company was the first to propose rational lubrication, committing itself to promoting the renewal of lubrication concepts and the transformation of lubrication methods across the whole industry and once again standing at the forefront of industry development. In the future, Kunlun Lubricant will speed up the adjustment of its product mix and service methods in response to market needs, so as to meet the real needs of the healthy development of China's automotive industry...