Kuwait Oxygen And Acetylene Company
Kuwait Oxygen and Acetylene Company (KOAC) was founded in 1953 by the late Salim Al-Huneidi to manufacture oxygen and acetylene. It was the first industrial gas manufacturing plant in the Persian Gulf area. The company later expanded its product range to cover a broad spectrum of other industrial and medical gases.
In 1974 Kuwait Industrial Gases Corporation (KIGC) was established to cater essentially to the expanding petroleum industry and was therefore located in the Shuaiba Industrial Area in proximity to the main refineries and petroleum installations.
Later, in 1977 it diversified geographically to the United Arab Emirates by establishing Arabian Industrial Gases Co.(AIGCO) in Sharjah. A recent addition to the group in Kuwait is PWT (International), a contracting company formed in partnership with PWT SpA of Italy, in the field of automatic pipe welding technology.
As the requirements of local economies grew, a number of ancillary trading companies and diversifications were established in both Kuwait and United Arab Emirates.