KRAHN STRONGLY REPRESENTED AT ELGI
2 May 2024
The 34th European Lubricating Grease Institute ( ELGI ) Annual General Meeting and Conference took place recently in Madrid with KRAHN strongly represented.
Assembled at this three-day technical event were the world’s leading protagonists from around 25 countries, all focussed on the future of the lubricants and grease industry and particularly the technical, economic, ecological and legislative challenges in Europe.
Representing KRAHN UK at the event, held at the NH Eurobuilding Hotel in Madrid, was Technical Development Manager, Ben Walter, accompanied by Patricia Laferte (Krahn France, Technical Sales), Jorge Trigueros (Krahn Iberia, Technical Sales), Jose-Manuel Trigueros (Krahn Iberia, MD), Fabio Limongi (Krahn Italia, Technical Sales).
“The conference is a highly technical gathering with a keen focus on trends, future challenges and how to become more sustainable without compromising on quality,” explained Ben Walter.”One of the key themes was reducing lithium usage in grease production and exploring alternative technologies, including polymer greases, sulphonate greases, anhydrous and hydrous calcium greases, and others. It was a very busy time yet extremely rewarding. All KRAHN delegates held multiple meetings, engaging and networking with market leaders and customers along with some of the Krahn group’s major principles, including Lanxess, Infineum, Exxon, and Baerlocher.”
One of the highlights of the conference was a presentation by Wayne Mackwood, Lanxess Global Head of Detergents and Grease Application Technology. Wayne is recognised as an expert in the design, manufacture and use of calcium sulfonate complex grease.
“Lanxess is an industry leading innovator in the development of calcium sulphonate greases and a key KRAHN partner,” continued Ben. “Wayne presented the work Lanxess is undertaking on the development of a next generation, food safe, overbased calcium sulphonate, demonstrating the superior performance both as a conventional sulphonate and as a grease feedstock when benchmarked against a conventional, current overbased calcium sulphonate. It was exciting to learn that the new material is expected to be scaled up for initial market sampling before the year end. The presentation generated a lot of interest with many significant market players indicating their interest in undertaking their own testing”.