NEW INTEL ON ELF OIL

It’s not often that The Good Oil gets to write about, well, oil. But this week we can, with Oil Intel taking over distribution, sales and marketing of the Elf brand in New Zealand.

The businessy bit about all this is that Oil Intel has entered into a joint venture with Total Lubricants — a brand it has distributed for two decades. That means everything Elf now comes under the new Total Oil NZ brand, with dedicated sales, marketing and logistics.

While Total lubricants are aimed at heavy duty use and industry, the Elf range is tailored for automotive and retail. It’s one of those brands that resonates with car enthusiasts especially.

Right from its earliest days in the late 1960s, the Elf brand embraced motorsport to develop and promote its products to enthusiasts. It partnered with Matra and worked with Renault (at the time, both companies were owned by the French Government) to build up French motorsport.

Elf helped fund Matra team principal Ken Tyrrell into Formula 1 in 1968; Jackie Stewart won the 1969 Driver’s Championship in a car wearing Elf sponsorship. And Tyrrell’s 1976 P34 six-wheeler must surely be one of the most famous F1 cars to carry Elf branding. The Pilotes Elf driver development programme, founded in the 1970s, helped get some big names into F1 in the 1980s and 90s, including Alain Prost and Olivier Panis (the last French driver to win a Grand Prix to date).

We can’t all be F1 stars. But more Kiwi involvement with Elf from Total — the fourth largest oil and gas company in the world — means a better customer experience, says Total Oil managing director Reuben Thickpenny: “Now with Elf being part of the Oil Intel family, we can elevate the brand . . . Elf fits into that quality picture.”