Castrol Industrial North America Inc. (“Castrol Industrial”) announced today that it has completed a major investment and transformation of its US and Canadian industrial lubricants and services business to better serve its customer base.

Castrol Industrial will focus on the Automotive, Metals, Machinery Manufacture, Aerospace, Mining, Cement and Engineered Wood Segments. These industries will be served through a combination of direct sales force and select distributors based on customer segmentation. This re-organized distributor channel, made up of approximately 35 regional distributors providing coast-to-coast coverage for customers, will also serve all other industries.

According to Vasu Kulkarni, Director Marketing & Technical Service for Castrol Industrial, the 35 or so distributors that now comprise its distribution network were selected by carefully evaluating the businesses of all of its distributors against four selection criteria. The first of these was the distributor’s capabilities.

According to the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association Quartely Index of Lubricant Sales (QUILS), the first quarter in 2006 was not too shabby for lubricant sales in the US. Overall sales reportedly moved up by 2.2% over the same time last year.

Grease sales was a particularly shinning star according to the report with growth of nearly 17%. If you exclude process oil sales from the mix (which grew over the period), the only negative in the report are general industrial lubricants. According to Quills, sales of these lubricants declined by just over 3% when compared to the first quarter of last year.

Petroleum Trends International (PTI) annouced today that its study, “The Global Lubricant Base Stock Business Challenges, Opportunities and Threats, 2005 to 2010” is nearly complete and will be available in August. This is the second in a series of base stock studies completed by PTI.