MOSIL Lubricants

The Impact Of Covid-19 on Lubricant Market

August 11, 2025

Lockdown & Lubrication | The Impact of Lockdown and Pandemic On Lubricant Market

The topic needs no introduction. The majority population of the world is quarantined at this moment in time. The imposition of Lockdown is affecting not only Industries and the Business communities, but it is also affecting all the employees and daily wage based workers up to some extent if not significantly.

Discussions related to lifting of the lockdown are one of the most favorite topic of discussion globally. Almost all businesses have digitized some (or many) processes to enable operations on Work-From-Home basis. There is a paradigm shift on what was considered doable and what was difficult. Working from home now looks easily done but visiting a customer in his office now looks difficult.

Lubrication market scenario in this lockdown

Due to extension of the lockdown many industrial units are now in a state of non – operation for more than 40 days. This causes a serious hazard if proper care is not taken up while re-starting the industrial equipments. Lubrication here plays an extremely critical role while resumption in the industry.

Usually a shutdown in an industrial unit is planned weeks (if not months) in advance and the unit is shutdown sequentially by taking necessary precaution at every stage.

However, this time most of the industrial units were shutdown with less than 12 – 18 hour notice leading to chaos while units went for a shutdown.

Nobody had planned for such a prolonged shutdown and in many cases the precautions taken at the time of shutdown may not be sufficient.

There are likely to be many instances of damage and breakdown demanding extreme actions when these industrial units resume activities. Well planned and executed shutdown also need to check well before getting started while this time most of the shutdown may not be efficiently planned or executed or both.

Instances of corrosion would be the most common issue leading to seizure or jamming of equipment components operating in high load or humid environments. High speed operating machines demand that the oil condition is evaluated and monitored before the start of the equipment.

Scope of Lubrication

Lubrication would play pivotal role and getting Industries back to its efficient running. This is an opportunity as well as a major responsibility of all Lubricant Manufacturers and Marketing companies globally.

Let’s start with cleaning operations which will be the most important step while re-starting the equipment.

With better cleaning solutions available for different types of cleaning operations like rust cleaning, dust and dirt cleaning, oil and grease cleaning etc. this would not be a difficult task if a proper chemical is identified and used. Re-lubricating all the equipment with high load, high speeds and high-temperature lubricants shall be the next step in all industries.

Scope for Business

Due to the Lockdown most of the staff is at home to follow physical social distancing. But as we all know businesses develop with healthy relations with the customers. Keeping this in mind we all should keep in touch with all our trust worthy customers, not physically but surely with digital connectivity.

At MOSIL we maintain conversations and relations with our customers on regular basis during this Lockdown Phase. As most other manufacturers, we are prepared with defined plan of action to handle every situation with its unique demand in terms of performance. Our expertise and experience with Lubricants will be put to best use to help our customers get back to normalcy as quickly as possible without compromising safety and security of the manpower as well as equipment.

While sudden shutdown due to Govt Notifications may not have been planned adequately, the re-start activity MUST be thoroughly planned and executed.

Planning becomes all the more necessary in a situation when an industry may be allowed to re-start the activity with only 33% or 50% of the regular manpower strength.

Please feel free to reach out to MOSIL or any of your other vendors for their guidance and expertise while starting your industrial units.
And most importantly, while conducting every activity, please remain Alert and Aware of the hygiene and sanitation requirements to ensure sustained operations.
Stay Alert, Stay Safe, Stay Healthy !!