PETRONAS Lubricants International inaugurates a space dedicated to recounting the milestones of its history between Tradition and Innovation. A journey through time, from its origins as Fiat Lubricants up to the merger with the Malaysian giant, in which the prestigious partnerships in the world of Motorsport stand out
London, 02/03/2023 -
PETRONAS Lubricants International (PLI), the division of PETRONAS that manufactures and markets lubricants and functional fluids globally, today unveiled Heritage Highlights, its corporate museum located at its Santena (TO) headquarters, designed by Turin-based architect Federico Bollarino.
The Heritage Highlights corporate museum features milestones from the company's history, which led PLI to become a leader in the lubricant sector, and showcase the technological innovations and sporting successes it has achieved over the last century, up to the present day. The museum starts with PLI’s origin in Turin, with the founding of Fiat Lubrificanti in 1912, before progressing to 1929, when Fiat Group's Lubricants Division began distributing its products in Italy.
During this 17-year window, the Italian manufacturer began large-scale automotive production and needed an original supply of goods to create consistent, cost-effective products. This spurred Fiat Lubrificanti to produce quality car lubricant in-house, a revolutionary move which married complementary skills, mechanics and chemistry. This created a space for the two fields to work together seamlessly and set the scene for PETRONAS to acquire FL Selenia many years later in 2008.
Heritage Highlights preserves memorabilia that is revered amongst car enthusiasts and winds its way through PLI’s trailblazing past up to its increasingly avant-garde future. From the track to the road, the museum encompasses PLI's commitment to not only producing the best, sustainable products on the market, but to the constant drive for growth and improvement.
Alongside the most recent brands, such as PETRONAS Syntium, a family of products used in Formula One with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team and PETRONAS Sprinta which are dedicated to two-wheelers and tested in recent years on the track with the Yamaha Team in MotoGP, the museum hosts the company's most historic brands. Heritage Highlights brings to life the history of iconic brands such as Paraflu, Selenia, the range of automotive lubricants specifically formulated for the FCA Group's engines and for the sports brand Abarth, Urania Blu and its past in the Dakar Rally, bringing to light and collating the historic communication campaigns, advertisements and technical partnerships that are deeply linked to them.
The museum demonstrates PLI’s historic claim of understanding engines as manufacturing and making cars is ingrained in its DNA, that also act as distinctive elements in the marketplace, testifying to PLI's ability to design bespoke fluids that have always met the industry's most stringent requirements.
The Heritage Highlights space also traces the line of PLI's Sustainable Journey, which began a long time ago, when the company was still called Fiat Lubrificanti yet already had a clear focus on reducing its impact on the environment. In the PLI museum, visitors can discover the pioneering Zero Impact Trend (ZIT) project, which launched in 1992 as part of the company’s primary goal to reduce emissions. The project finds its place in the museum's exhibition as a milestone in the company's technological innovation, and demonstrates how sustainability is a fundamental element of continuity between the most distant and most recent history, as well as one of the values on which PLI has always based its strategies and decisions.
The focus on the environment, combined with PLI's willingness to work closely with vehicle manufacturers to create tailor-made products reaches into present day, demonstrating the company’s longstanding commitment to designing fluids and lubricants that balance low environmental impact and superior performance levels, always keeping pace with the evolution of engine technologies.
Domenico Ciaglia, Managing Director EMEA at PLI, comments on this further milestone achieved by the company: "We are proud to have set up our Heritage Highlights corporate museum to house the milestones of our history and celebrate our origins and achievements. Being able to spread the corporate culture and our tradition as innovators is a great source of pride and a unique opportunity to make us even better known to employees, customers and visitors. PETRONAS can boast of a great cultural and historical heritage, and this Museum will be a meeting point capable of stimulating creativity and a sense of belonging, both to the company and to the territory, which is central to our exhibition and with which we have a very strong bond. From the birth of Fiat Lubrificanti to the meeting with PETRONAS to the union in PLI in 2008, we have made many steps forward and achieved many successes. Collecting our history in this space dedicated to us is exciting and makes us realise how much the company is dedicated to always achieving the best, to contributing to progress with innovations that are useful every day, on the road and not just on the track, and to promoting ever greater sustainability in the industry.”
Visiting the PLI museum will be like taking a journey through time.
A time during which evolution was constant, where looking to the future became ingrained in the company’s ethos to provide technologically advanced solutions to the market and manufacturers. This reaffirms the continuity of values and founding pillars that are integral to PLI, from day one, to present day.
Heritage Highlights also binds the museum's curator architect to PLI: "This project acted as a retracing of my professional beginnings. At the end of 1987 - while still an architecture student - I had the opportunity to participate as a photographer in the filming of the Atai Paraflu commercial in Canada: a fundamental experience that allowed me - within the creative agency Feeling - to later follow other important projects such as the creation of the Blu Officina network or the Zero Impact Trend programme,” explains Federico Bollarino.
ABOUT PETRONAS LUBRICANTS INTERNATIONAL
PETRONAS Lubricants International Sdn Bhd (PLI) is the global lubricants manufacturing and marketing arm of PETRONAS, the national oil corporation of Malaysia. Established in 2008, PETRONAS Lubricants International manufactures and markets a full range of high-quality automotive and industrial lubricants products in over 100 markets globally. Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, PLI has over 30 marketing offices in 28 countries, managed through regional offices in Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, Turin, Belo Horizonte, Chicago, and Durban.
Currently ranked among the top 10, PLI is driving an aggressive business growth agenda to secure its position as a leading global lubricants company at the forefront of the industry. For more information, please visit www.pli-petronas.com.
