Brazilian lubricant market
The performance of the Brazilian lubricants market in 2021 brought a much larger recovery scenario than expected by most observers, including those more optimistic. Growth was 9.39% when compared to the previous year, which even though it suffered a sharp drop in the second half due to the Covid-19 pandemic, had already shown a strong recovery in the second half.
The total sales volume of lubricating oils was 1,477,351 m3, historically second only to 2013 and 2014. This performance followed the trend presented by the automotive industry that grew 11.6%, mainly in the segments of commercial vehicles, involving trucks, pickup trucks and vans. The production and export records obtained in agribusiness also played an important role in the lubricants scenario in 2021.
Monthly volume variations were also less pronounced, maintaining a high and constant level throughout the year, even with the traditional expected drop in the last two months. This behavior stood out from the previous two years that suffered more abrupt variations during the periods.
Click on the image that follows and read the article “The Brazilian lubricant market” in the digital magazine “LUBES EM FOCO – issue 85” :
According to the records of the National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels – ANP, some segments of the lubricants market had important variations in the year 2021, some of them still without a logical explanation, since the agency reports numbers reported by companies in its Product Movement Information System – SIMP, which undergoes constant changes and revisions by companies, leaving market analysis with uncomfortable retroactive variations.
The lubricant segment for the cycle grew 5.3%, while the Otto cycle segment increased 3.9% compared to 2020, confirming the trend presented by the automotive industry, while oils for transmissions and hydraulic systems rose 7.0%, in line with the increase in agricultural and mining activity. Some variations that do not follow market trend lines in the same way as other segments are note. In this particular, we saw the publication of numbers with a very peculiar character, such as the negative variation of the Segment of Gears and Circulatory Systems in 23.8%, going against the rest of the market, and in contrast, a positive variation also with this same high percentage in the segment called Other Finished Lubricating Oils.
The history of the Gears and Circulatory Systems segment shows that there was an atypical volume of sales started in July 2019, with figures around twice the historical average and returning to normal from June 2020, causing great distortion in the annual variation. The segment called Other Finished Lubricants, on the other hand, saw an increase, in September 2020, when the market re-sumded, of another third of its average in 2019, following this high level in 2021, with peaks in March and August of about 50% of that average. These market movements are still unclear, but we know that the vast majority of these “Other Oils” are from the industrial segment that is quite diversified and showed growth of 3.9% in the year.
