Lubrizol to invest $150m in India, partner Grasim

Mumbai: US-based specialty chemicals firm The Lubrizol Corp will invest $150 million in India, its largest-yet investment in the country, as it bets on housing-led infrastructure, transportation and home products in the country, its chief executive officer and president Rebecca Liebert said.

Lubrizol - a Berkshire Hathaway company - will invest in its additives business, install a 100,000-metric tonne CPVC resin line in partnership with Grasim Industries at its site in Vilayat, and double its compounding capability at its plant in Dahej.

The company first forayed in the Indian market in 1996 through a joint venture with Indian Oil Corporation for lubricants and fuel products, and bought their chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CVPC) product offerings to India in 2001.

The partnership with Grasim to build the world's largest single site capacity CPVC resin line was announced in 2020. Its first phase was expected to be operational in late 2022.

"We did announce the investment in 2020 initially, but with Covid and all of the global supply chain challenges, this project has been delayed, but we plan to break ground this fall and we will be actively working to start up very soon, but it'll be a 2025 start up," Liebert told ET in an interaction.

"We will work together to make sure that we manufacture safely under all the right conditions and have high quality products coming out of it," she said.

Lubrizol sold around 240,000 tonnes of CVPC last year, and will be adding capacity of another 100,000 tonnes. At the current growth rate of 7-10%, Liebert sees this additional capacity being consumed in four years.

India is currently the fastest growing region for the company, and Lubrizol is targeting revenues in India to touch the $1 billion mark in five years.