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Materials

Every era is named after one, which should be a clue.

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8:50

Hindalco Industries

Hindalco didn’t build global scale — it bought it, for $6 billion, and renamed itself the world’s largest rolled-aluminium producer.
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9:06

Kobe Steel

Ichiro Uemura · 1905

Kobe Steel is a Japanese industrial conglomerate whose name misleads: steel accounts for the smallest share of its business among major Japanese steelmakers. It grew not through market innovation but via naval technical guidance and orders after the Russo-Japanese War. Its real strengths lie in wire rods, transport aluminium, screw compressors, and wholesale power supply—three distinct divisions operating semi-independently. The gap between its identity (a steel company) and its economics (a diversified industrial group) is structural, not accidental.