Founded in 1992 by sisters Caron and Elaine Harris, FATS (the initials stand for Forwarding African Transport Services) has been built up from nothing to become a R200 million services company and a major player in the South African freight forwarding industry.

The company, run by US investor Warren Buffett, has reported that net profit rose 29 percent to $5.05 billion in the three months to September from the same period last year.

This was mainly down to its investments at the peak of the financial crisis in General Electric and Goldman Sachs, boosting it by $1.2 billion. Meanwhile, Berkshire's revenue also grew 13 percent to $46.5 billion.

Reports have emerged that AT&T executives have already begun mapping out a strategy for what would be a complex deal with Europe’s largest mobile carrier. Part of this plan involves identifying which of Vodafone’s assets the company would retain and which it would sell off, and to whom.

As part of what is the biggest investment in Malaysia by a British company in the past year years, Weir Group will build a new foundry, machine shop and rubber processing plant south of Kuala Lumpur.

The foundry and machine shop will expand Weir's production of high-quality castings, while the rubber line will increase the group's ability to meet growing demand for Linatex, a 95 percent natural rubber product used in the mining industry. These operations will see the company’s workforce in the country more than double to 1,000.

While the name, SPX Cooling Technologies, has only been in use since 2005, the company that bears this title actually possesses over a century of experience, during which time it has become amalgamated with some the best known names within the cooling industry including Marley, Ceramic, Recold and Hamon Dry Cooling. This has resulted in the company possessing more than 250 global patents in the power generation, industrial, refrigeration and HVAC markets.

In the last four decades no fewer than 698 offshore fields have been discovered in the UK Continental Shelf, producing in that time some 41 billion barrels of oil and gas. With another 20 billion barrels estimated to remain untapped it comes as little surprise that the North Sea continues to be a huge boon to the UK and other surrounding nations.

Peru’s rich mining history is well documented, with the roots of what has become a hugely attractive region for the industry dating back centuries. Such a legacy can be seen in the development of the Colquijirca mine, the origins of which pre-date the era of the Incas, when it has been documented that ancient tribes silver mined the surrounding foothills of Puntac-Marca.

For some companies their very name has come to be synonymous with their particular area of industry. Think mobile phones or tablets and Apple springs to mind. For oil and gas it will be BP or Royal Dutch Shell, while mention of the fast food sector immediately conjures up images of McDonalds or Burger King. While these businesses are hugely different when it comes to what they do, what they share is the fact that their strong history and track records of success have made them the leaders in their field.

Mining operations rely on their equipment, and there’s no doubt that each site has a lot of moving parts in its conveyors, trucks, shovels, milling and grinding trains, not to mention its associated drilling programmes. All of this has to be nursed and protected with the right oils and greases. As any operations manager knows, lubricants can be a big budget item and one that pays back in proportion to its contribution to things like frequency of maintenance, equipment life and the avoidance of running problems that involve stopping the machine.