Leading lubricant brand Castrol is entering its 125th year in business, and it will be marking the event through a three-pronged approach to meeting the shifting needs of its customers.
Businessman Charles Wakefield, who was also a philanthropist and Lord Mayor of London, originally established the company in 1899 as the Wakefield Oil Company. It initially focused on making lubricants for the first internal combustion engines and steam engines. In the 1920s, it launched its Castrol Motor Oil amid the growing spread of automobiles, and it became so popular that the company changed its name to match the product.
Castrol CEO Michelle Jou said that celebrating the milestone was not simply about:
“…reflecting on the past, but charting a course for the future. Our strategy embodies our dedication to accelerating our customers’ progress, helping them to face the challenges of tomorrow. We’re developing more circular offers to help customers achieve their sustainability goals and exploring exciting new growth opportunities beyond lubricants.”
Castrol has named its strategy: “Onward, upward, forward”. Onward refers to progressing its mobility solutions and helping goods and people to travel more efficiently, while respecting the ideal of circularity. Upward targets the company’s industrial customers, by helping them to improve their operational efficiency through making their machinery more reliable and efficient with lubricants like hydraulic oil.
Finally, unlike the first two goals, which build upon Castrol’s existing strengths, forward refers to new business opportunities for the company, such as immersion cooling systems for data centres, end-to-end service and digital solutions, and coolant solutions for batteries.
