Lubricant

Some of your ex-colleagues would have been there in the old Shell Direct days.

And I'd say probably around 2008, after doing a couple of years of custom service and supporting the team on sort of inbound calls, inbound sales, I got the opportunity to start to build on some connections that I had and started to sell lubricants into our retail forecourt business that we had at the time.

and that was my first flurry into selling lubricants out on the road and from there it sort of quickly expanded I think as the business at Certas did expand at that time there were a lot of acquisitions that were made by the group and Lubricants sort of grew arms and legs over quite a short period of time and it presented opportunities to learn, to expand, to take more on, to sell different products.

And around about 2011, got the opportunity to take on some key account management, some of our larger national accounts at the time.

uh at that stage it got me more involved with our suppliers so starting to have three-way conversations between suppliers with customers and then and then our business and from there really started to grow arms and legs and at that stage probably two three years later it was like now's the right time to start managing people if i've if i've taken my sort of account management to a certain level I now want to start managing people and start to bring them on that same journey so probably say around about 2015-16 got the opportunity to take on a small team within the group and again just continued to expand the role from there and you asked me the question about, am I gut instinct or spreadsheet driven? I think in my sort of earlier parts of key account management, certainly became a lot more spreadsheet driven around the types of opportunities we were dealing with at the time and what the business needed as well.

But today, for you maintenance and reliability engineers listening, we are looking at a chemical breakthrough that just eliminates that delay entirely.

we are unpacking the formulation of Whitmore's Witslat Extreme, which is this high-performance slide lubricant.

And it's doing something really unique.

It is.

It's actively borrowing premium enclosed gear oil technology to solve some of the most frustrating wear issues on exposed heavy machinery.

Which is, I mean, taking a chemical solution that was engineered for a sealed, protected, highly controlled environment and re-engineering it to survive out in the elements, that is a massive leap.

OK, let's unpack this, because before we get into, you know, which specific fleet vehicles or machinery get this new lubricant, we really need to understand the material science here.

Definitely.

Both come in bulk drums and kegs for the automated pump houses.

But for manual application out on the machine itself, Woodchem Extreme is available in highly convenient 50-count boxes of small 8-ounce bags.

Which is brilliant for the mechanics.

Right.

A mechanic can literally throw a box in the back of a truck, climb up the boom and toss the individual bags directly into an open gear set.

Whereas NH comes in massive non-returnable plastic totes or larger bags shipped in heavy pails.

and the logistics of manual application can save hours of grueling labor or cause a team to skip a lubrication cycle entirely because hauling the heavy pail up a 100-foot ladder is just too dangerous.

The packaging strategy is just as vital as the extreme pressure additives.