Doing global business in today’s passenger car engine oil landscape presents unique opportunities. Navigating a diverse landscape of performance specification requirements and the fluctuating availability of varying base stocks has created a level of complexity that many may not have experience with.

Continued market fragmentation naturally creates some logistical formulation and blending challenges. Global product portfolios must meet competing performance requirements, depending on their target markets, and additive strategies must evolve in order for oil marketers to stay agile and efficient.

Luckily, finding the additive technology to achieve the heightened levels of performance required in today’s marketplace doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right additive technology and support from the right partners like Lubrizol, oil marketers doing business around the globe have the opportunity to seize enhanced operational simplicity. Let’s explore how:

Tackling Specification Fragmentation in North America

Passenger car engine oil marketers must typically meet a minimum of ILSAC and API performance standards with consideration of the grace periods (ILSAC GF-7 and API SQ, respectively). These specifications are very closely linked, with the primary difference being an enhanced fuel economy requirement to achieve ILSAC GF-7 certification.

The North American market generally uses the ILSAC specification as its baseline performance requirement, but much of the rest of the globe, including South American and Asian markets, uses the API specification. This means that global product portfolios must be blended to meet tailored levels of performance to ensure optimal formulation efficiency.

Doing so requires a specific additive strategy. For example, baseline performance could be achieved by increasing the treat rate of your additive in some instances. The same can be done to achieve even higher levels of performance demanded in portions of the market. Consider that proprietary General Motors’ dexos specifications, which typically represent a premium performance tier in oil marketer portfolios; all require even heightened levels of engine oil performance in key areas.

The versatility of a single additive chemistry—one that meets a broad range of specification performance requirements all on its own—can be beneficial depending on the breadth of an oil marketer’s product portfolio.

However, simply increasing the additive treat rate is not necessarily the most efficient or cost-effective additive strategy for blenders. Instead, an additive that can provide baseline performance while being able to achieve higher demands with the addition of a booster may be more advantageous, helping to streamline blending operations and simplify production.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that new category development rarely slows. ILSAC is already underway developing its next category, ILSAC GF-8, which is expected to raise the bar for performance even higher. Your selection of additive chemistry will only become more important as the industry continues to evolve.

Learn More About the Latest Trends Shaping Formulation Strategies

Managing Diesel Performance Priorities in Europe

Another example of global market fragmentation comes in the European market. This marketspace has a high level of complexity with diverging industry and OEM specifications often with their own unique performance challenges. This complexity creates potential opportunities for oil marketers to streamline and consolidate portfolios where additive technologies are able to cover a broad range of these industry and OEM specifications.

Consider that ACEA engine oil sequences, which set the minimum performance level of lubricants in the European marketspace upon which OEMs build, contain technical requirements which focus on managing the soot created in the combustion process. This is because diesel fuel, used widely throughout Europe in passenger car applications, generates significant amounts of soot during engine operation. The engine oil should work to reduce the impact of this soot generation.

This is typically accomplished through the addition of dispersant chemistry to the engine oil formulation. Dispersants will suspend the soot generated in the combustion process within the lubricant. This helps to prevent thickening of the lubricant due to the accumulation of soot which ensures that oil is able to flow to critical engine parts. However, the structure and treat rate of these dispersants can have adverse effects on the fuel economy performance of the final engine oil formulation.

For oil marketers with broad, global portfolios, seeking out broad additive coverage can help to eliminate production complexity.

From a chemistry perspective, these requirements can be at odds with North American fuel economy requirements, creating a formulating dilemma for oil marketers servicing both markets. But some high-performance additive solutions are available with broad coverage claims that can deliver the required performance characteristics. For oil marketers with broad, global portfolios, seeking out such technology can help to further eliminate production complexity and simplify blending operations with one additive that can help you meet numerous performance specifications.

Reliable Supply and Base Oil Flexibility

Amidst ongoing global supply issues, oil marketers are further facing the need to optimize costs while securing reliable raw materials supply. And in 2026, balancing these two priorities can prove challenging; reliable base oil availability has proven to be fleeting as geopolitical complexities continue to disrupt supply chains.

Additive versatility is one of the most important characteristics to seek out, helping you stay nimble in today’s marketplace.

Given these circumstances, oil marketers must be able to take advantage of the base stocks that are available to them at any given time, and their additive chemistry must be able to accommodate for those changes as they happen.

Because different base stocks have different performance baselines, additive packages must be able to help all of them meet the performance standards that product lines are held to, be they ILSAC, API, ACEA, or dexos1 requirements. Indeed, additive versatility is one of the most important characteristics to seek out, helping you stay nimble in today’s marketplace.

Additive Solutions Your Business Requires

At Lubrizol, our goal is to help our oil marketer partners reduce operational complexity while providing the industry’s broadest range of base oil coverage for whatever helps you keep your business running smoothly and profitably. This means additive versatility across a wide range of base stocks from our dedicated additive solutions for today’s and tomorrow’s performance requirements, with the ability to scale quickly with simple boosters for a complete product tier.

We also offer premium solutions to meet global priorities. For example, Lubrizol® PV8410 passenger car engine oil additive, is designed for premium full-synthetic product lines targeting high-performance and extended-drain applications. It's designed to help meet multiple global specifications making it suitable for OEM factory fill programs and aftermarket offerings where versatility and reliability are critical. The product is suitable for modern engine technologies, including hybrid, and advanced emission systems which further enhance its relevance in markets focused on sustainability and regulatory compliance. By delivering superior performance and broad specification coverage, Lubrizol® PV8410 enables oil marketers to differentiate their offerings and capture value in the premium segment.

Success in today’s marketplace requires additive solutions like these to help take the complexity out of blending while you focus on other priorities. Lubrizol is here to help you do exactly that, with additive science that drives progress and makes your business better. To learn more, get in touch with our experts today.

How Additives Support a Fragmented Engine Oil Market