Melanie Cook talks about her passion for the business, the focus on supporting customers around the world and the challenges being faced in an era of new shipping fuels.
Can you tell us more about your background before you joined Lubmarine?
I have been with TotalEnergies for over 26 years, starting originally with Elf Oil and have worked in many diverse roles in that time.
My first position was in lubricants, followed by a commercial sales role in the fuel cards business. I then moved to Retail with responsibility for overseeing an Engineering Helpdesk providing Maintenance and repair support for our network of 600 UK forecourts.
In 2000 Elf merged with TotalFina, and I was now in TotalFinaElf, changing its name to Total in 2003 and then finally to TotalEnergies in 2021.
Following the merger, I took on the role of Retail Contracts Manager. A purchasing function tendering for national service providers maintaining forecourt equipment and ensuring performance met contractual KPI’s - quite a responsibility with one of the largest budgets in the business.
In 2009 I moved back to sales, to a good position working for our Lyndsey Oil Refinery as UK LPG Manager, selling B2B. This was a great opportunity as I had full autonomy for strategy decisions along with P&L responsibility for an entire business unit. LPG is an interesting market in the UK as it is high demand but with constraints, notably volatile production and limited storage options.
In addition to my core LPG role, the refinery was still then producing a 3.5% sulphur marine fuel that we needed to sell via ex-tank to ships bunkering in the Humber Estuary. I took this on board, and it was perhaps my first real foray into marine. It was a complex and aggressive business and a very different vibe to marketing, and a great experience for me. The grounding gained in LPG and Marine subsequently proved to be so useful in Lubmarine.
How did you transition into working in Lubmarine?
I moved into Lubmarine in 2019 having seen the opportunity to join the team as the International Marine Key Account Manager. The role was advertised internally and looked both interesting and challenging. Lubmarine is an exciting international business, constantly evolving and I am proud to be part of the team.
Tell us about your role and what it involves
Lubmarine is the Marine Lubricants brand of TotalEnergies Lubrifiants, and I am the Country Manager for the UK and Ireland. My core responsibility is to manage and develop strategic relationships with our key marine customers who trade all around the world. I leverage my skills in new business development, negotiation, and contract management to secure and renew long-term contracts with major ship owners and managers, offering them innovative and sustainable marine lubricants and digitalized onboard monitoring services.
Shipping is a fast paced and changeable market. It is crucial that as a supplier we must be adaptable and flexible to provide the best service we can to supply and support customer business operations – no matter where they are or when they need us.
One of the key opportunity areas for us is in adding real value through our focus on delivering high end customer service, technical support and quality products. Having delivery capabilities in 100 countries and more than 1000 ports this is really where we excel.
Part of my work with customers is targeting their new builds in shipyards. We have seen a real influx of new builds and vessel orders, driven by the challenge of preparing for shipping’s new fuels era – an area that is only set to get bigger.
The is one of the biggest challenges we are experiencing and will continue to experience, realigning strategies in line with market changes and the developments that our customers make with their own energy strategies towards decarbonisation. We have to be agile.
As part of that we are also tasked by our R&D and technical teams to see if our customers are happy to run new product trials and testing with us. UK customers are currently participating in several such trials.
We have a small, dedicated customer team in the UK – looking after sales, customer operations and technical services, ready to support and visit our customers wherever needed.
Have you held any other roles whilst at Lubmarine?
For the past two years, I have taken the lead on Global Business Development for the Offshore market. Offshore support vessels have different trade and lifting profiles to conventional shipping, and therefore require tailored solutions to meet their specific needs. Smooth supply is critical and ports can be niche. Thanks to our global footprint, and detailed understanding of this business we have the correct products available wherever and whenever our offshore customers need them. It is an interesting and growing sector, and we are positioning ourselves as a leader in this space.
Away from work
I am married with 2 children, who albeit are quite grown up do still keep me busy.
When I get spare time, I do voluntary work with Pets as Therapy with my Labrador Digger who is an approved therapy dog. We visit different places, for example the local hospital, meeting people recovering from serious injury or even on palliative care. Many of them miss their own pets and can be quite overwhelmed to see him, so it is really rewarding to do that. Digger is a real natural in these environments.
I like to travel and do travel a lot with my job. I am particularly fond of France as my family and I have spent a lot of time there.