Pukekohe stopped burning used oil and started selling it for up to 10 times more

Every oil change in New Zealand used to end the same way. A workshop drained the sump, a collector picked up the drum, and the oil was burned as low-grade furnace fuel. That has changed in Pukekohe, and the reason is commercial, not sentimental.

Oil recycler Glide’s new re-refinery now converts used motor oil into re-refined base oil (RRBO), the main ingredient in new lubricants. The operation employs 38 staff, up from 20, and has a plan to lift throughput from 24 million to 34 million litres a year over the next one to two years. That is a roughly 42 percent volume increase from a plant still running at 70 percent of capacity.

Same waste, very different price

The headline number here is not the carbon. It is the margin. General manager John Knox says the base oil is worth “probably in the order of five to 10 times” the furnace oil the company used to produce. Glide sells it through the commodity market, the same way crude-derived base oil is traded.

That matters. The feedstock was already being collected. The trucks, the collection network and the customer relationships with workshops were already in place. What was missing was the processing step that turns a disposal problem into a product competing on price and quality with virgin oil. Glide has added that step, and with it most of the value that used to go up a chimney.

Recovery rates are strong. Around 70 percent of collected waste oil comes back as base oil, with the remaining water, light fractions, middle distillate and asphalt extender also repurposed. The company’s position is that lubricating oil is degraded by contamination rather than by the oil itself wearing out, which is why it can be re-refined repeatedly.

Forty years in the making

This is not a startup chasing a green grant. The Pukekohe site has handled waste oil since 1984, originally under the name Waste Petroleum Combustion, a name that rather neatly describes the old business model. The re-refinery reached practical completion on 31 March 2026 and moved into commissioning in April, billed as the country’s first re-refinery.

At the time of completion in March, Glide said the global oil disruption tied to the war in Iran was lifting demand for properly recycled lubricants. Whatever the price cycle does next, a domestic supply of base oil made from local feedstock is a useful hedge for a country that imports essentially all of its petroleum products.

Rebuilding a sliver of refining capacity

The timing is worth noting. New Zealand lost its only crude refinery when Marsden Point closed in 2022, and the site now operates as an import terminal handling about 40 percent of national fuel demand. The country exited heavy processing because the margins did not stack up against Asian mega-refineries.

Glide’s plant is tiny by comparison, and it is not a substitute for fuel security. But it shows where onshore processing can still pay: niches where the raw material is already here, the logistics are local, and the product earns a genuine premium. That is a better model for regional manufacturing than trying to rebuild scale industries that the market has already judged uncompetitive.

What workshops and fleets get out of it

For the businesses supplying the oil, there is a practical benefit too. Glide estimates the process avoids around 100,000 tonnes of carbon a year, a figure independently verified by Toitū Envirocare. Dealerships, mechanics and fleet operators facing growing pressure from customers and lenders over emissions reporting can now point to a verified outcome for their waste oil rather than a vague recycling claim.

That is the kind of sustainability gain business should welcome: it comes out of a profitable process, not a levy or a compliance regime. Nobody had to mandate it. A company with a long-standing feedstock simply worked out that it was burning money.

The next test is volume

The plant now has to prove it can fill its capacity and hit that 34 million litre target. That depends on collection rates, on base oil prices holding up, and on blenders continuing to accept recycled product as a like-for-like input. None of those are trivial.

But the fundamentals are sound. Pukekohe has taken a waste stream New Zealand was already paying to handle, added a processing step, nearly doubled its workforce and started selling into a global market. More regional manufacturing stories should look like this one.

Sources

• RNZ: Pukekohe oil re-finery turns used oil into new base oil, boosting jobs and export (2026-10-20)
• Newsy Today: Glide Oil’s Pukekohe Refinery Recycles 70% of Collected Waste Oil (2026-10-18)
• Glide: The next chapter of the Glide journey has now begun (2026-03-31)
• Glide Oil: FAQs
• Franklin Times: The real oil – Glide clears air
• CarExpert: Used engine oil gets a second life at NZ’s first re-refinery