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Chevron Malaysia has officially announced the name of its new RON95 petrol as Caltex Premium 95 with Techron.
The new grade replaces its RON92 grade (Caltex Techron Silver) and
will be sold alongside its RON97 grade which is now renamed as Caltex
Premium 97 with Techron (previously Caltex Techron Gold). The move is
in line with the government’s directive that the petroleum industry
must drop RON92 and replace it with RON95 nationwide.
At this time, the price of RON95 is set at RM1.75 per litre, or 5 sen
more than RON92 and 5 sen less than RON97. It is said that the
government will either stop subsidizing RON97 or reduce the subsidy but
either way, the price of that grade will go up to around RM2.00, it is
expected. Nevertheless, the higher price of RON97, which has been more
popular than RON92 all these years, is not expected to be an issue
because most vehicles in Malaysia can run on RON95. Therefore, most
motorists will be switching to the new grade and will even save money
doing so.
Because RON95 is expected to become the dominant grade, the petroleum
companies have ensured that the quality and performance characteristics
are similar to that of their RON97 petrol. This wasn’t the case with
all the brands where RON92 was concerned and only Caltex and BHPetrol
were willing to confirm that the additive package in their RON92 was
identical to that in their RON97.
“I can confirm that our new Caltex Premium 95 with Techron has exactly
the same additive package as that of Caltex Premium 97 with Techron so
whichever grade motorists choose, they will get the same superior
benefits,” said Jeremy Oh, Country Chairman of Chevron Malaysia.
“As of today, around 40 of our stations are selling Caltex Premium 95
and we should have our entire network of over 420 stations with the new
grade by September 1,” said Mr Oh.
According to Philip Chee, a Fuels Specialist at Chevron, the Techron
additive package is quite expensive as one of its components is unique
in that it does not leave any deposits after combustion. This is an
important point to consider as additives are chemical compounds and
some may remain behind after doing their work cleaning the engine.
While it may seem like a matter of just sending the new petrol grade to
the stations and starting sales, the process is much more complex
behind the scenes. According to Albert Lim, Chevron Malaysia’s Area
Marketing Support Manager who heads the Caltex Premium RON95 program,
the complexity is due to having separate tanks for RON92 and RON97 on
the one hand, and the storage tanks for each grade are also not the
same size.
“Due to lower demand for RON92, the tanks for this grade have been
smaller while the RON97 tanks are larger. But RON92 is the grade that
is to be phased out by RON95 which is take over from RON97 as the
larger seller. So we had to come up with a procedure to not only make
sure the new grade is supplied on time but to move RON97 to the smaller
tank,” he explained.
He said that the other aspects of the exercise like pump refurbishment
and education materials for customers were easy to do in comparison.
“Chevron is very serious about product quality and integrity so we have
made sure our procedures are strictly followed and customers will get
the grade they pay for during this period of transition,” he stressed.
Incidentally, a quick way to identify pumps with RON95 petrol is to
look for those with yellow nozzles. The colour has been adopted by all
the companies except one for their RON95 grades. Mr Lim also drew
attention to the dye in Caltex Premium 95 which is yellow in colour,
giving the petrol a golden tint.
PetrolWorld 180809
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