Lubrizol, a US-based specialty chemicals company, has announced plans to open a technology and innovation centre in Maharashtra, India.
The centre aims to promote collaboration across Lubrizol by co-locating laboratory capabilities and building on the success of existing regional centres of excellence (COEs). It will also include a customer experience centre, enabling Lubrizol to develop solutions alongside customers and partners.
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The facility will feature analytical capabilities to support research needs, including automation and digital tools, enabling teams to apply decision science to accelerate the development of next-generation solutions.
Lubrizol highlights that the new centre is designed to promote innovation, encourage collaboration, and accelerate market delivery for the company’s regional and global customers.
Rebecca Liebert, Lubrizol’s president and chief executive officer, said: “The technology and innovation centre will serve as a model for future global centres, aligning with our strategy of establishing interconnected innovation centres worldwide. Our innovation teams in India have already enabled significant innovation in the many industries we serve, including earning the company global customer innovation awards. We expect this centre to expand on those successes.”
Dr Rahul Misra, Lubrizol’s India, Middle East, and Africa senior director of technology said: “An innovation centre in Maharashtra provides proximity to key stakeholders, fostering seamless collaboration and operational efficiencies. Through a highly collaborative working space, the centre enables strategic research and development, leveraging the best of our legacy innovation and formulation processes with future-state technology to help us take our quality innovation one step further.”
The announcement for the new centre follows a series of investment commitments from Lubrizol into India reaching $350m over the last 18 months.
The plans include building the company’s second-largest global manufacturing facility to grow Lubrizol’s manufacturing capacity and support the region’s growing transportation and industrial markets. It also expects to build the world’s largest CPVC resin plant.
The company also opened a global capability centre in Pune last year, doubled its capacity at its Dahej, Gujarat, manufacturing site, and announced several other projects.
