Having enjoyed a long and successful career at TotalEnergies in a number of key positions around the world, Arnaud Bourhis has recently taken up a new role based in New York as Regional Zone Manager for the Americas for Lubmarine.
Arnaud and his team cover a huge territory across both North and South America in addition to the Caribbean. Here he talks about the diversity of the role and some of the challenges and opportunities they face.
Can You Tell Us About Your Background and Experience at TotalEnergies Before Starting Your Current Role?
I am a chemical engineer by trade but have worked at TotalEnergies in a number of roles around the world.
My career with TotalEnergies started in France working in Quality in HFO – before I moved to the bitumen business in sales, first in France, then in Africa and the Middle East where I was in charge of business development with responsibilities of market intelligence and strategy as well as a focus on supply and logistics.
From Dubai, I moved to the Industrial Lubricants department as Energy Market Manager working with OEMs and affiliates. I then moved to Brazil as Commercial Director with responsibility to build the lubricant distributors network with a new strategy and price positioning, before moving to Chile as Managing Director of Marketing and Services for our affiliate.
The experience of managing different B2B segments in various countries is what has led me to Lubmarine and my role as Regional Zone Manager for the Americas, which has brought me to New York where the role is based.
Can You Tell Us About Your Role and What is Involved?
I’m responsible for managing the Lubmarine business in America with the teams that we have here working across the continent, looking after a number of aspects of the business – the supply chain for our international lifting in all ports of the Americas’ network - the international key accounts that we have mainly in North America, and our partners and affiliates across the Central and South Americas region.
As you can imagine it’s a busy and diverse role.
What we do have is a great team here – International Key Account Marine Managers liaising with our shipping customers, working closely with them on their vessel lubrication needs and engine lubrication management strategies, with the support of the Marine Lubrication Engineer and the Customer Service and Operations team.
We also have a supply team in charge of our lubricants supply for the US and Canada territory, working closely with the Customer Services & Operations team. All of them are essential to ensure we offer a safe, smooth and reliable service to our customers.
In North America – we are dealing with all segments – bulkers, container ships and cruise ships.
The cruise sector has been a targeted one for the last few years given the proximity of the main accounts based in Florida.
We are also responsible for managing activity across the region and coordinating/liaising with the wider team in France including our technical team, supply team, and marketing team.
We have 11 people here in New York, 1 in Puerto Rico and 2 in Columbia.
In terms of market, we have 2 main segments.
In North America, we are liaising with ship owners and ship managers who operate internationally.
Then in Central and South America, we are dealing with more regional customers and our partners responsible for delivering our products to our international customers’ vessels.
We also have power generation customers in a few countries such as Ecuador and the Caribbean along with our partners delivering our products and services to the power plants.
One of the critical parts of my role is to coordinate with the different teams in order to ensure good communication and decision making to provide our customers the right products and services in a context of tight supply with very limited lead-time expected by them.
What are Some of the Key Challenges You and Your Team Face?
The marine industry is such a dynamic & demanding business that the team really needs to be continually on its game as market conditions can be affected by a multitude of factors.
So, the first key challenge is to manage and try to better anticipate the minimum stock levels as per the customer requests for lifting larger quantities in some ports due to their cost optimization. We aim at ensuring our customers get the products they need when and where they need them in a shipping market context, which more often than not requires short notice to deliver.
It’s a complex business in terms of logistics, thus we look extremely closely at forecasts whilst dealing with new constraints such as the raw material supplies being more difficult and costly due to the container-shipping situation.
In recent years, additives producers have been facing real industrial challenges so our performance in managing our product availability has become a key factor of success for our key accounts.
That being said, the second main challenge remains to work continuously on our competitiveness to maintain our market position, offering good and reliable products and services in this tough environment.
Are There Areas of the Market that You See As Offering Growth Opportunities?
From an actual sector perspective, we are certainly increasingly engaged in the cruise and power generation industries. Not only in terms of growing our customer base but also in terms of product and service innovation and development that we believe gives us a competitive advantage in the market.
As an example, we are promoting a new lubricant that improves vessels’ fuel efficiency, which, for the cruise sector in particular, will mean major savings for operators as well as reduced carbon emissions.
In addition to our lubrication specific solutions, as part of an energy major in TotalEnergies, we are also able to offer broader solutions for our clients where it is relevant - introducing them to other marketing divisions like Marine Fuels, with the aim of reducing fuel emissions.
Supporting customers with both lubricants and fuel solutions with dedicated expertise in each area can be a real advantage to them.
In terms of growth, the second main segment we are increasingly active in is the offshore and tugboats in the local US market.
When you are not working, what do you like to do?
In my spare time – I love to cycle which I do in Central Park. I am also a real fan of tennis and enjoy playing it with my daughter regularly and also with my sons when they visit from France where they live.
I also enjoy going to the park with my wife and my daughter - ideally when the weather is nice and there is no snow!