Q&As

Continuous investment in condition monitoring is most important

1. What led you into join-ing the condition monitoring industry and specifically one that deals in oil analysis?

After earning my BSc degree in Chemistry in the UK and having spent 15 months working for ESSO at their research centre in Abingdon, I naturally wanted to follow a career path that was scientific in nature. I was lucky enough to get a job as a senior chemist with WearCheck in their Pinetown (Durban) laboratory, and I have now been with the company for the past 20 years.

I have remained in the condition monitor ing industry for so long because it is a field that is constantly evolving and improving: and I enjoy the immense job satisfaction gained from knowing that we genuinely help our customers to boost productivity, save money and improve the availability and reliability of their components through our condition monitoring programme.

NEIL ROBINSON, MD WEARCHECK SA

The emergence and Growth of MOGAS Brand

Puma Energy operations in Africa

Mining is a key market in Africa, Kindly tell us about Puma's involvement in mining and some of the technical challenges you help your customers with.

Our experience in working closely with the mining sector anchors en the understanding that only 3% of the maintenance budget is spent on procurement of lubricants while more than 60-70% of all mochanical failures relate to poor or improper lubrication practices. For this reason, Puma's focus is to work with mining engineers and end users to shift from price of lubricants to lubrication solving Puma Energy is an innovative hydrocartoon supplier and has brought various cost saving initiatives to the mines to continually reduce operating costs. Before commencing any value adds project, Puma Energy and the engineers at the mines benchmark these projects to enable Puma to come up with an actual savings to be accrued by the mine. All value adds projects offered by Puma are presented to the mines for approval and sign off prior to implementation. Once agreed and implemented then projects are monitored on an ongoing basis upon which Puma present all savings achieved against each value project and upon which the mine is required to sign off on the achieved savings as per the agreed value projects.

JOHN M. SSEMWOGERERE

MOGAS GROUP LUBES BUSINESS HEAD

B What do you think can be done to address thses challenges?

The solution lies in implement-ing severe reprimand to counterfeiters; enhance quality testing capabilities and facilities, more vigilance and collaboration by marketers.

In addition to the above proposed solutions to curb product counterfeiting, marketers should endeavour to be ahead of the counterfeiters by applying technology features that easily alert the end-user or inspector about the authenticity of a product before buying; and also ensure adequate product availability everywhere on the market, as counterfeiters take advantage whenever short product supplies occur in the market.

STANLEY CHIPETA, PUMA ENERGY AFRICA, HEAD OF LUBRICANTS

Staying afloat Africa's most competitive lubricants market

3. What has kept Lubcon Nigeria a success upto date given the presence of other major lubricants in the indus-try?

Basically it is just about understanding the market. Secondly, we are always bringing Innovation Into the market. These have enabled us to stay on top. The Nigerian lubricants market is very competitive.

There are about 51 lubricant manufactur ers right now and they are all seeking to win the market. These include multinationals Eke Total and Shell as well as Independents such as A-Z lubricants, Eterna and Ibeto.

TAIYE WILLIAMS, MD, LUBCON INTERNATIONAL