Austrian mining and marketing house DCM, which offers a wide range of products and services to the steel industry worldwide, has opened an office in Dubai saying it considered the Middle East and North Africa region important to its business.

The new office will cater to a very wide geographical area, handling the business requirements of the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey while also dealing with the African region including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco and South Africa.
The company indicated it had cited its office in Dubai taking into account the emirate’s rapid industrial development and its growing status as a regional entrepot. DCM’s business in the region has also expanded requiring it to have a physical presence. 
 DCM markets high-grade manganese and chromium ore in Australia and iron ore in Ukraine, which it ships to Europe and the Middle East.  It trades principally in iron ores, bulk ferro-alloys and noble alloys directly from producers, which it then sells to customers worldwide.  These include silico manganese, ferro manganese, ferro silicon, ferro chrome, ferro molybdenum, ferro vanadium and ferro titatinum for the steel industry in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East.
The company also operates a financing, logistics and warehousing division to meet customer needs: all aspects of transportation and the supply of bulk commodities, as well as just-in-time deliveries through its international warehousing network.
 “We have more than 50 years of marketing steel-making raw material worldwide with our global marketing network spanning over 50 countries,” said Barry Gidwani, managing director, DCM Middle East, at the launch party.
 “We view North Africa and the Middle East as high-growth and high-priority markets. In recent years, as Dubai’s growth has taken off, we have steadily increased supplies to the region.”
Gidwani said the new Dubai office, based at the Atrium Tower in Bank Street, Bur Dubai, would be fully operation from June 2005”.
The launch party was held on 3 May at Trilogy in Madinat Jumeirah followed by a presentation and dinner at Shimmers on the beach. DCM was founded in 1846 by Heinrich Depisch’s Sohne & Co Apparatbau GmbH in Vienna to trade in the Danube region.
In 1956 descendant Herbert Depisch became the representative of an international trading house, operating in the field of raw materials, ores and alloys worldwide and later establishing Decometal GmbH to trade with Yugoslavia and Western Europe.
Since then, DCM has formed strategic shareholdings and joint ventures with companies such as Consolidated Minerals Limited in Australia and Poltava GOK in the Ukraine.  It has representative offices in Ukraine, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Russia and China and today remains privately owned by the Styrian Depisch family, with its head office in Vienna.  In January 2003 DCM received its ISO 9000:2000 certification.