In December 2013, Graphene Nanochem, in cooperation with the National Innovation Agency of Malaysia agreed to launch Malaysia's national graphene hub, with hopes that Malaysia will turn into a global graphene innovation hub. Now the Malaysian government has launched the National Graphene Action Plan (NGAP) 2020, a "strategic and calculated venture on graphene".

The NGAP 2020 outlined five potential industries that could best benefit from graphene — rubber additives, Li-ion battery anode/ultra-capacitors, conductive inks, nanofluids and plastic additives. The government says that according to their studies, by 2020 Malaysia could capture a $20 million nanofluids market, a $90 million plastic market and a $4.4 billion rubber market.

In November 2013 Graphene Nanochem announced it will soon start selling their graphene-enhanced PlatDrill drilling fluid. Today the company announced it signed the first contract to supply PlatDrill to a national oil company.

The initial deal is to deliver about 1,000 tons of PlatDril, and it is worth £1 million ($1.7 million). Scomi Oiltools helped winning this order. Graphene Nanochem says it is confident it will meet the market expectations for 2014, and they see "substantial revenue increases from 2015". The customer performed several stages of testing and validation of this new fluid to ensure successful deployment.

Graphene Nanochem signed a joint-venture agreement with Emery Advanced Materials to co-develop new applications for Graphene Nanochem's graphene-based nanomaterials.

Graphene Nanochem says that the Emery Group is one of the world's largest oleochemical from renewable sources producers. The two companies will develop three applications with a combined market value of over $100 billion.

Angstron Materials (owned by Nanotek Instruments and based in Ohio, USA) is a graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) and single-layer graphene sheets developer and producer.

Ian Fuller, the company's marketing and business development chief, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had regarding the company's technology and business. Ian joined Nanotek Instruments in 2006, focusing on fuel cells. He later joined the Angstron Materials team.

Graphene Nanochem installed a second reactor at its Nanomaterials facility, in Senawang, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The company says this new reactor will double the company's graphene capacity to two tons per year.

Graphene Nanochem plans to continue and expand its production capacity in 2014 and 2015 as the company hopes to start offering graphene-based drilling fluids soon. Yesterday the company said it will build a graphene hub in Malaysia in cooperation with the National Innovation Agency of Malaysia.

A couple of weeks ago Graphene Nanochem announced that it hopes to start selling htier graphene-enhanced PlatDrill drilling fluid soon, and now the company announced that they signed an agreement with Malaysia's Scomi Oiltools, a global supplier of drilling fluid services. Scomi will exclusively market a range of formulated PlatDrill series to the oilfield chemicals market.

Graphene NanoChem says that PlatDrill fluids deliver superior performance with lower environmental impact as well as better lubricity, load bearing capacity and higher viscosity properties. The first of the PlatDrill series were tested successfully tested and earmarked for deployment in Malaysia and Myanmar (pending the identification of suitable well sites by Scomi's customers).

Garmor announced a few days ago that it will begin to start producing graphene oxide flakes next month using its low-cost environmentally-friendly production process. Sean Christiansen, Garmor's VP of engineering has been kind enough to answer a few question regarding the company's business and technology.

Dr. Christiansen received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2001. Since then he worked in several companies, helping them to commercialize new innovations in high technology industries.

Researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory have discovered that graphene is an excellent steel lubricants. In fact it turns out that graphene dramatically reduces the amount of wear and friction in sliding steel surfaces, because of graphene's low shear and highly protective nature. The graphene lubricants also prevented oxidation of the steel surfaces when present at sliding contact interfaces.

Current lubricants are made from environmentally unfriendly additives or solid lubricants (such as molybdenum disulfide or boric acid). Both Oil-based and solid lubricants wear in time and need to be consistently reapplied. Graphene on the other time, can last a considerable length of time due to the flakes’ ability to reorient themselves during initial wear cycles. Graphene, made entirely out of carbon is environmentally friendly.

Graphene Nanochem (previously Biofutures International) successfully raised £32.5 million (almost $50 million) and acquired Malaysian specialty chemicals group Platinum Nanochem. The company now trades on the UK's AIM stock exchange (ticker GRPH) with a market value of around £155 million ($235 million).

The new company holds an existing core specialty chemicals business in Malaysia, and also holds the exclusive license to a process known as Catalyx which uses a catalyst to extract graphene from biogases (such as methane). This process can potentially mean low-cost graphene production. They are also developing graphene-enhanced lubricants for used in the extraction of shale gas.

Update: the fund raising was successfully concluded, Graphene Nanochem raised $50 million and is now a public company

Biofutures (a publicly-traded UK company) is going to focus on low-cost graphene production. It will change its name to Graphene Nanochem. Biofutures raised money at the UK AIM stock exchange and the market capitalisation is £162 million, but was suspended from trade in December 2012.

Graphene Nanochem holds the exclusive license to a process known as Catalyx which uses a catalyst to extract graphene from biogases (such as methane). This process can potentially mean low-cost graphene production.