Total seeks regulatory nod to acquire Petrolube

DAILY NEWS Reporter

TOTAL Tanzania has applied for Fair Competition Commission (FCC) approval to acquire Petrolube oil bending plant for an undisclosed amount.

Total, incorporated in the country some five decades ago, want to acquire the Petrolube lubricant blending facility in Dar es Salaam.

According to FCC public notice issued yesterday, the commission is investigating the intended acquisition in the line with the laid down procedures and rules under regulator docket.

“FCC has powers to investigate, inter alia, entry into and exit from markets” with objective of promoting and protecting effective competition, FCC notice read.

The notice intends to serve as a notification to any part that is objecting the merger in the next 14 days from yesterday. However, the notice failed short to disclose the deal amount and size.

Total Tanzania is a subsidiary of Total SA and was incorporated in 1969. Total Tanzania is wholly owned by the Total Group, with 99 per cent shares owned by Total Outremer and 1.0 per cent owned by Total Africa SA.

While Petrolube, an affiliated member of the global lubricants group Fuchs Group, was established almost two decades ago. Petrolube was found by Feroz Kassam in 1999 and thereafter quickly formed an alliance with Fuchs.

The firm was appointed sole distributor for the region. The firm manages a 8,000 square-metre plant that makes use of computerised automated batch blending systems based on sophisticated supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA).

The blending plant was designed to Fuchs Petrolube AG specifications and built by Petroserv, the specialist Dubai engineering company.

The facility includes a base oil tank farm with 2,200 metric tons storage capacity and can process 22,000 tons of lubricants and 2,000 tons of greases per annum.

Total, last March, closed a deal of acquiring Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation's (GAPCO) assets in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The GAPCO principal assets were two logistics terminals, in Mombasa, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as well as a retail network of more than a hundred service stations.