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According to REACH, the European Community Regulation on chemicals and their safe use about Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical substance, which entered into force on 1 June 2007, hocem did pre-register its products. Though the first deadline for final registration ends December this year, most of the companies started already the registration process to finalize, so did hocem.

If you do have enquiries concerning REACH, please contact us: reach@hocem.de.

- Transit and storage terminal Liepaja Latvia for Sales FOB into seagoing
   vessels and loading of flexi tank / container with sales on CFR basis
- Storage terminal Antwerp Belgium for European Distribution on FCA or
   DDP basis
- Storage terminal Immingham UK for Distribution within the United Kingdom
- Storage terminal Malaszewicze Poland

For the third year in succession hocem again is Gold Sponsor of the annual ICIS World Base Oils Conference taking place in London on February 19th and 20th.

We follow this tradition as we always enjoy highly interesting discussions with our customers as well as other market players and company delegates with whom we yet have to enter into business relationships.

We are sure to enjoy interesting topics presented by highly skilled speakers and the inspiring get-togethers in-between.

We kindly invite to meet up at our hocem stand near the refreshment area and are looking forward to welcome you!

Whilst hocem continuously works on its performance, due to increasing demand, we had to make necessary adjustments in our logistical setup to keep a satisfactory efficiency towards our customers in both the export and the retail market.

Since 3rd quarter 2008 we have additional storage capacities at LBC Terminal Antwerp, Belgium. LBC is a highly sophisticated storage with heatable tanks, well experienced in the handling of base- and luboils including latest loading facilities for trucks and rail tank cars directly on the vessel and by means of using a fully implemented computer system ensures timely loadings.

We are operating, supply and distribute the full product range at following terminals:

• Antwerp Belgium
• Eastham UK
• Liepaja Latvia
• Tallinn Estonia and
• Reni Ukraine.

With these storage capacities we are able to keep a high flow of base oil throughput in line for our clients demands.

Well, what a year.

The first eight months of the year saw dramatic price increases. Likewise blenders and luboil producers reacted by means of additional purchases and stockpiling.

In addition Turkey entered the market taking out substantial volumes of base oils during the first half of the year. This pushed prices even higher and resulted in shortages especially for the light grades.

Then the turn. Prices leveled out in August at high numbers and stayed pretty stable during September before we saw prices starting to tumble at the beginning of October.

Since then prices dropped even more dramatically as they increased in the months before. As a result purchasers leaned back waiting, using up stocks and having no intention to buy more than the minimum.

The financial crisis which took most people by surprise by the impact it had on the feedstock markets heavily contributed to the deflationary situation.

For the upcoming time we expect due to the decreasing demand of production in industrial segments a destabilized market with a lower level of demand.

For sure this year’s dramaturgy will be an issue at ICIS conference and highly interested to have talks with you.