As most are likely aware, record setting rain has caused catastrophic flooding in the St. Louis, Missouri area, and tragically numerous deaths in Kentucky. 

Among the many businesses impacted by the rain, Afton Chemical’s Sauget, Illinois lubricant additive plant incurred significant flooding that resulted in an unplanned outage. As a result, Afton advised customers that, effective July 26, it declared the outage a Force Majeure event and as such, will be limiting orders for engine oil additive packages and some off-road lubricant additives manufactured in North America

Blenders have yet to be advised about the plant’s restart or the overall effect of this going forward.

This news comes at a particularly tough time for blenders since the supply of lubricant additives has been exceedingly tight for nearly two years. Although each of the big four additive manufacturers in the US have had challenges since the start of Covid, many blenders say they had turned to Afton and Infineum to fill the gaps left by significant shortfalls in supply coming from Lubrizol. While you can be sure Afton is doing everything possible to bring the plant back on line, there is little doubt that many blenders are now scrambling to find alternative supplies.