The Balkan lubricants market have significantly shrunk in the last few years. Not only the economies experienced a downfall but also the influx of imported products became lower, accompanied by a reduction in market prices and thus reduced profits for producers and distributors.

From 2008 to 2013 , the region’s market dropped at a rate of 14% annually. From 2013, it has experienced slight increase of 1,6% each year, said Zorica Davidović, head of Bargos Loa consulting, based in Belgrade, in an interview for Lubes’n’greases, the renowned magazine for lubricants.

In the past, the lubricants are considered a highly-profitable products, but now they have become commodities where only highly specialized and flexible producers could remain in dynamic market competition.

The region’s leading lube marketers are Nis and Fam from Serbia, TEHNOSINT and Optima from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ina from the Croatia, Olma from Slovenia and Makpetrol from Macedonia. These companies have overcome difficult times during the last war and the difficult economic period and crisis.

Serbia is the largest lubricant market in the former Yugoslavia. Serbia as a state consumed about 100,000 tons of lubricants the 1980s. Over the next two decades, demand has dropped to 45,000 tons, they said in Bargos Loa, citing data from the Chamber of Commerce.

We are highlighting part of the text stating that the Tehnosint is a medium enterprise with 50 employees and production with a capacity of 15,000 tons per year.

According to statistics from 2014, the most modern factory in the region for production of the lubricants, located in Laktaši, produced 3,500 tons of finished products.

More information in the original document.