Isel Featured in Jacksonville Business Journal

Reporter Jensen Werley, from the Jacksonville Business Journal, recently visited our facility to chat with us about our history, industry, and exactly what it is that we do. 

ISEL brings new meaning to keeping a refrigerator running.

The company keeps air compressors, industrial refrigerators and other mechanical items running smoothly by manufacturing the oil and lubricants needed to prevent any jams or malfunctions.

But ISEL, a family-owned company headquartered in Jacksonville, has taken that process one stop further: It specializes in micro-batches, or very small orders of highly-customized lubrications, that can ship within a day’s notice.

“We have an intense focus on the logistics and speed of shipment,” said CEO Adam Sandler. “We like small orders and can do a high volume of them.”

The company was started by patriarch Jim Sandler, who has a long background in the oil industry and founded the company once he saw an opportunity that the major oil companies weren’t handling.

“The markets we are serving would be considered small to big oil companies,”Adam Sandler said. “It would be difficult for big oil to serve them, it’s more likely that they’d sell them the best fit. We’re filling a niche.”

The company, which has a significant market share of the Southeast for this industry, uses a combination of engineering and chemical knowledge to customize exactly what a customer will need for their next job. The CEO said the company must first know exactly how the machinery the customer is using operates, and then looks at the chemistry to determine how the temperature, atmosphere and surrounding environment will affect the compound. ISEL uses its own software to perfect the recipe each customer needs.

“It’s really the people that are key,” Adam Sandler insisted. “It’s not the face that we have fantastic software, it’s having that expertise in house.”

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