South Coast Products
20 Southbelt Industrial Drive , Houston, Texas, United States

SOCO is a leading manufacturer of valve lubricants, thread compounds, sealants, packing and maintenance products for the oil and gas, transportation, refining and petrochemical industries. Our company has built its reputation by providing products that deliver exceptional performance under the most extreme conditions, all manufactured in our state-of-the-art facility in Houston, Texas.

History

South Coast Products (SOCO) was started in 1968 by Hector Cantu, dubbed the "Mad Chemist" by his customers. Cantu had been working in a lab developing the Bentone Grease Structure, a lubricant that would not melt in extremely high temperatures.

A salesman as well as a chemist, Cantu was determined to launch his own company. While attending an auction where a World War II ship was being sold for scrap, he purchased a dough-making machine, convinced he could use it to make pipe dope. The joke around the office remains that it was a dough making machine all right...over the next 20 years it would make SOCO a lot of dough.

The new company's first big success was the Wooley Booger TFE thread compound. TFE compounds were held in low esteem by drilling engineers, but the compounds performed exceptionally well and eventually owned a majority of the market share in the Permian Basin of West Texas.

Organic growth was a sound strategy but not fast enough for Cantu. In 1991 he purchased the Chemola product line from Hi-Port Industries, giving the company its first recognized brand name. The Chemola name dates back to 1930 and has been synonymous with quality synthetic valve lubricants that perform in extreme environments. While Chemola had not been strategic to Hi-Port, it soon became SOCO’s flagship product line and today SOCO is the world’s leading manufacturer of valve lubricants under the Chemola brand.

But SOCO was not built on products as much as it was built on a business philosophy. That philosophy is simple: earn your reputation, put your customer’s success ahead of your own, and make getting and keeping good people a priority. That philosophy appears to be a sound one because today SOCO is not only a world leader in synthetic valve lubricants, it is also one of the top three manufacturers of oilfield thread compounds.

Despite its success, SOCO is not content to rest on its laurels. The company is developing environmentally friendly products to replace products that put the environment at risk. This should allow the company to expand its market share in existing markets and positions the company to aggressively move into new markets and become even more visible in a fast paced and highly competitive industry.