Arabian Petroleum Ltd is fundamentally a maker of specialised lubricants - the fluids that let any moving metal part run without grinding itself to a halt. Founded in 2006 and manufacturing since 2009, it has grown from a single plant at Taloja to three factory buildings at Ambernath, a public listing in 2023, and a customer list that stretches from neighbourhood mechanics to the Indian Air Force. The recurring approach is technical self-reliance: it develops its own formulations, makes its own chemical inputs, and pursues the hardest-to-get approvals, so that it can compete with global giants on performance while controlling its own costs. # Business segments A single engine with three distinct revenue streams - own-brand manufacturing, private-label supply for global oil companies, and institutional sales to government and defence - all flowing from one integrated plant and R&D backbone. ## 1. Lubricants: the company's sole manufacturing engine **APL makes roughly 500 different lubricant products across automotive and industrial uses, sells them under its own brands and other companies' labels, and supplies some of India's most demanding government customers - all from a single manufacturing campus where it also develops the chemistry.** - **Own brands for every moving part** - the company sells automotive lubricants (engine oils, gear oils, coolants, brake fluids) under the retail brand Arzol, and industrial lubricants (hydraulic fluids, cutting oils, vacuum oils, rust preventives) under the APL and SPL brands, covering everything from two-wheelers to heavy commercial vehicles and factory machinery. The split is roughly 55% automotive and 45% industrial by market distribution. - **Makes lubricants for its competitors** - APL is a private-label manufacturer for Shell, Varroc, Endurance, Mahindra First Choice, Greaves Cotton, and others, meaning it produces lubricants that these companies sell under their own names. It is also Shell's exclusive partner for relaunching Shell's metalworking fluids in India, with all the intellectual property and formulations for those products belonging to APL. - **Supplies where approvals take years** - the company sells to the Indian Army, Navy, Air Force, ISRO, and Railways, and holds rate contracts with BHEL, MOIL, and BEML. Winning an Indian Air Force contract requires laboratory testing, ground testing on fleet, airborne testing, and capacity verification - a process that takes at least two to three years - and APL is currently working on eight to nine different products for the IAF. - **The lab is the factory's brain** - the in-house R&D facility is NABL-accredited and ISO 17025 certified, equipped with about 30 sophisticated testing instruments including ICP-OES and FTIR machines from Thermo Fisher Scientific that can identify every metal and element in an oil sample. The lab develops both water-based and oil-based chemistries, and has produced products like peelable rust preventives, synthetic engine oils down to 0W8 grade, and a water-soluble forming fluid supplied to ISRO. - **Backward integration controls the recipe** - APL began producing its own fatty acid amides in December 2025 and has laid the foundation for esterification capability, with esters now being produced, so it now makes key chemical inputs that go into its own lubricant formulations and can also sell them to the open market. This reduces dependence on outside suppliers for the ingredients that determine product performance and cost. ## 2. Specialty metalworking fluids: a bolt-on for the top-tier OEMs **Through its 91%-owned subsidiary Lavisa Technologies, APL acquired a business that makes high-performance cutting and forming fluids for automotive giants like Tata Motors and Bharat Forge - a customer set it could not previously reach.** - **Bought, not just built** - Lavisa Technologies took over the business of Emulsichem Lubricants on a going-concern basis in December 2025, acquiring customers, technology, and know-how without taking on any of the seller's liabilities. The deal brought immediate access to major OEM clients where APL previously had no stronghold. - **Indigenous chemistry at a lower cost** - most components for metalworking fluids are typically imported by the industry, but Lavisa makes most of these components indigenously using chemical reactions, keeping costs low while matching the customer experience of competitors like Castrol and Blaser Swiss Lube. - **A near-monopoly in one niche** - one product line for tapping applications is described as having no real competition, which creates strong pull from customers who cannot get it elsewhere. # Group structure and partners **APL operates through two subsidiaries and a web of exclusive technology partnerships that give it access to nanotechnology, defence formulations, and the Middle East market.** - Arzol Petroleum Trading FZE is a wholly owned subsidiary in the Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai, with a licence for petrochemicals trading - it sources raw materials and sells finished lubricants, broke even in its first year, and is insulated from US-Mexico trade-war risks. - Lavisa Technologies Private Limited is the 91%-owned subsidiary that houses the specialty metalworking fluids business acquired from Emulsichem Lubricants. - APL has an exclusive licensed tie-up with Xado, a Ukrainian nanotechnology company, to use Xado's proprietary nano-molecules that penetrate metal surfaces and create a self-healing ceramic layer during engine operation - products are co-branded as Xado + Arzol. - The company has absorbed technology transfers from DRDO for Universal Recoil Fluids (used in gun and artillery recoil mechanisms) and Low Temperature Coolants for extreme cold military applications, with approvals valid for five years and extendable to ten - these are recurring tender-based supplies with very low competition. - The Arigol brand trademark is currently held in the promoter's name, with plans to transfer the intellectual property to the company.