Hinduja brothers (£6bn) Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja co-chair the Hinduja Group, a multinational conglomerate with a presence in 37 countries and businesses ranging from trucks and lubricants to banking and healthcare.
Scientists wondered eagerly what they might be useful for, and fancied they might make perfect lubricants, or molecular ball bearings.
Emaar has recently agreed to lease industrial space to a Saudi-French lubricants company and an aluminium joint-venture from Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
The Freudenberg Group, a maker of filters, seals and lubricants, has been owned by the Freudenberg family for eight generations.
That would both deplete the supply of lubricant and contaminate the water.The team found two likely looking lubricants.
Lack of refining capacity means that it must import expensive petrol and lubricants.
It is these discoveries, not necessarily the carbon tubes themselves, that Dr Tenne reckons will produce the applications.He observes, for example, that carbon nanotubes failed as lubricants (one of the early uses dreamed up for them) because they react with metal surfaces to form carbides.
Magneti Marelli has focused its operations, selling its lubricants arm, but acquiring 500 European outlets from the Midas quick auto-service business as the prelude to an ambitious continental roll-out.In general, Fiat has reduced its dependence on local demand.
Since its acquisition of Mobil, Exxon has been able to slash $1 billion-worth of inventory from the two firms' lubricants business alone.
Special lubricants make the engines run more smoothly.
But it is made a little simpler by the fact that purchasing falls into two rough-and-ready categories: direct materials that go into end-products (such as parts or chemical feedstocks), and indirect materials, which may be anything from carpets to lubricants to hotel accommodation for travelling staff.
