Elia Nuqul, a prominent Jordanian industrialist who began to make tissue paper at a small shop in central Amman in the 1950s and expanded the business to make it a regional brand, died in Amman on Wednesday. He was 93.
His family announced his death, saying in his obituary that he spent his life as “a pioneer and faithful to his homeland”.
Born in 1928 in Ramla, a central Palestinian town now in Israel, was one of a generation of dispossessed Palestinians who underpinned Jordan's economy and played a central role in modernising the desert kingdom after fleeing there around the time that Israel was created in 1948.
Fine, the tissue brand Nuqul founded, is one of the few Jordanian products known outside the kingdom and can be found on supermarket shelves from Lebanon to countries in the Gulf region.
His business grew into Nuqul Brothers, a group of 30 or so companies based in Amman. They include a ready-mix concrete division, car dealerships and a sponge producer.
However, the manufacture of hygiene and sanitary paper remains the company's core business.
Nuqul started in the early 1950s as a small trader in Souq Al Sukkar, a commodities market in central Amman, before he imported a machine and raw material to make tissues.
He attended Al Aamereh School in Jaffa and received a certificate after completing his Palestinian and UK matriculation in 1948.
He is survived by his wife Samira and four children, including son Ghassan, chairman of Fine Hygienic Holding, the family's core business.
