You've probably been there yourself, you know, the mystery of the missing polymer. It was there when you started ; it's gone when you really need it. A new chapter in the continuing story of grease wizardry needs writing. A perfect case for Sir Half-a-Cone and Oil, as my old friend, Big Al, would have said. Elementary, my dear Watson. Every new potion needs to be studied through the looking glass. It's no longer enough to establish whether or not it's good enough. But will it still be there tomorrow? It's this REACh thing again, isn't it ? Not for polymers as such, but anyhow. So now we need a product steward, and not only a product manager. How do we ensure future availability of raw materials for new and innovative greases ? It used to be enough to validate solubility in mineral oil (naphthenics, of course). Now we're being pushed towards the renewable option and previously soluble sticky stuff can pop out quite unexpectedly, like a monkey's brain in a jar of vinegar. We've learned the lesson the hard way. Three years of advanced product development, expensive eco-tests, field trials. And then the letter. "We regret to inform you that ..." Should we have known ? OK, maybe, but there used to be alternatives. Plants open and plants close. Some suppliers supply other suppliers. So things can suddenly disappear in a cloud of smoke for a whole multitude of reasons. And now, there's REACh. "We're not going to pay all that money for registration and testing only for the European market". You can just hear them, can't you ? And wouldn't we do the same for Mordor. For the Shire, it's OK. One man's sin is another man's moral. So what's the moral of this story ? Well, as we would say in dear old Scotland, "Tak a bogle upstream, tae mak shure thir's nae deed sassenach, yi ken". So upstream's the word. The key to the future is backwards. Madagascan logic ?

 Posted 25.06.2008

Have you ever wondered what the secrecy's all about? I do. Sometimes I really wonder. After more than thirty years in the business, I've come to the conclusion that there are probable only two real reasons for secrecy: you've either got something to hide, or you don't. And I'm becoming increasingly sure that, in the grease trade, it's the latter. "Don't tell anybody, but we still use castor oil derivatives in our soaps", or was it zinc dithiophosphate? I mean this commodity grease stuff is hardly rocket science, is it? We all still owe a lot to good old Clarence. My old economics teacher, Ebenezer Scrooge, used to tell me that maturity is the elimination of differentiation. So in our mature and commoditised grease market, are there any real differences and, if so, what makes things different? What separates my EP 2 from the rest? It might contain a secret potion with some quasi-name like "Cucumberjuice^TM", but that's probably calcium carbonate anyway. And does anybody really buy it? So we all do the same thing, don't we? And we mature greasemakers ourselves; have all our differences been eliminated? Me too? You two? They say that we're all unique. Except me, that is. Since I'm mature, I must be the same.

So why am I going on and on about this? It's REACh isn't it? The ELGI has set up a consortium to consider sharing the costs of testing our "common soaps". Please note "common". We believe that we actually might make the same soaps (but don't tell anybody!). And even so, we still need fifty-eleven or so meetings to discuss the confidentiality issue. "Don't tell anybody else that we use 12-hydroxy-stearic acid and lithium hydroxide, and we won't say anything either". How on earth can we test common soaps if they're not common and seen to be common?

So who's really got something to hide?

Only time will tell, when everything becomes transparent in Helsinki.

 Posted 12.09.2008

Sticky business this grease stuff. No wonder you feel you're stuck. How can I be expected to think outside the box when our whole environment lives and breathes standardisation. New and innovative product? Yeah, but what's its NLGI grade?? OK load? Might as well forget it! I presume you've heard about "Blue Ocean Strategy". Don't make comparison with your competitors! Go for value innovation and find new and unexploited markets where the rules of the game are still undecided. The grease business is undoubtedly a tiny little segment within the big red ocean of lubricants. And industry standards determine most of what we do. EP too, me 2. So how do we get out of here to the deep blue sea? Go to the edge and have a look. The authors of the Blue Ocean Strategy would have us rely on "Eric". Eliminate, reduce, increase, create. But if there's nothing you can eliminate, you seemingly can't afford to create. In Doctor Who, the Daleks were good at elimination but what can we eliminate. We can't even eliminate the penetrometer! So, what part of our customer value offer is unnecessary? It was perhaps OK for Southwest Airlines, or IKEA, or Starbucks. But what can a poor greasemaker do. Get rid of reliability? Get rid of diversification? Beats me. So I'll need to stay with the devil (our competitors) for the time being but I will keep on climbing the trees to see what's out there, far off in the deep blue sea. Anyone for a coconut?

 Posted 05.12.2008

In forecasting possible future scenarios, Alvin and Heidi Toffler have written about what they call the politics of the "Third Wave", where we have already gone from an agrarian society through the industrial age and now into a new revolution where the whole world is changing in a steep exponential economic "tsunami", if you so will. They have described the future marketplace as a terra incognita, a world where economics will not be based on money, land or raw materials but on intellectual capital. Where competition will be fierce and where markets will be merciless. Where small companies will outsmart giant corporations on a global scale. Even if we have been blind to this fact until now, no one can possibly have missed the recent problems of the automotive elephants. If we are to believe this scenario, there is hope for the small specialised grease producer. The giant corporations, the leading petroleum companies, are all concentrating on energy these days and lubrication and friction are being left to us niche players. No longer dependent on a finite resource, we can therefore go ahead and innovate the market. Grease, as you hopefully have realised by now, is a "deforce", a dynamic energy saving shearable surface separator (DE + 4S) and not a sticky oil. We can also contribute to the energy equation, by creating extreme low friction solutions instead of just selling commodity me² EP2 s. So look out for us, terra incognita. Here we come! These are new times ... with a need for new players.

 Posted 10.12.2008

The focal point has changed from Utö to Uyuni. From the Stockholm archipelago to a salt desert in Bolivia. Metallic lithium was first "discovered" by Johan Arfwedsson in 1817 on the island of Utö, just outside Stockholm. And, as we all know, it has become the cornerstone of the grease industry all over the World, following the patents of Clarence E. Earle in the early 1940's. Today, half of the World's reserves of lithium are to found in the salt wastes of Uyuni, in south-west Bolivia. President Evo Morales and his Government intend to stay in complete control of this "National Treasure" and we can perhaps expect yet another "Chavez effect" here. In addition, lithium is becoming an ever more valuable component in the development of batteries for electric cars now that many of the World's biggest car makers are preparing to switch from fossil fuels. According to a representative from Mitsubishi, the demand for lithium will not double, but increase five-fold, and demand will surpass supply already in 2015.

So grease makers need to prepare for one of two possible scenarios. Lithium hydroxide will not be available, or, alternatively, it will be so expensive that few will be able to afford it. Lithium based greases are commodity products on the market today, multi-purpose and me-too. In 2015, that may change dramatically. In six years time, we will need a new base technology to replace our dear lithium EP 2. "Lithium grease, RIP" ("What's the Poin't", Eurogrease May/June 1998).

Are you ready for a brand new beat ??

 Posted 09.02.2009