Dubai Precast: making a difference with technical knowhow

The Dubai Precast facility sits on a 40 000 sq m property, along with a separate area of 20,000 sq m used for additional stockyard, in the Jabel Ali Industrial Area, where a team of over 800 people caters to the precast needs of the United Arab Emirates. The company has an annual production capacity of 350 000 sq m of hollow core slabs and 85 000 cu m of reinforced concrete elements such as wall panels, slabs, beams, columns, and staircases for buildings, along with infrastructure products like tunnel segments and bridge beams, among others.

Country Director Henrik Jensen explains that the company is not looking for high-volume projects. “We’re interested in medium-sized projects where we can make a difference in terms of our technical knowhow, projects that are more complex in terms of design and execution. We specialize in shapes, colors, textures and projections. Our focus is on the architectural side of precast and how to combine that with standard products like internal walls and slabs. We want to be a leading company in pre-finished façade and colored concrete.”

Jensen adds that while Dubai Precast is not the biggest company, they have a full range of precast products, from hollow core slabs to prestressed beams to stairs, cladding facades and whatever is required to complete a building. “The market changes from year to year. It’s important for us to be flexible and to be able to provide all elements that the market requires.”

Dubai Precast prides itself on its reliability, delivering projects on time and of the quality that it is required. Maintaining such high standards is important for Ove Pedersen, Senior Operations Manager. It was one reason they chose Elematic to supply the equipment for their precast factory.

“Elematic supplied all our hollow core equipment – the beds, extruders and shuttles. We recently ordered 10 new casting tables to increase capacity and improve quality. We chose Elematic because they have the experience. We’ve learned from experience that sometimes it is too expensive to buy cheaply. Machine suppliers need to be reliable.” Pedersen, who has been in the precast industry for 37 years, explains.

One of the things Pedersen celebrates is the high level of skill and experience that their team at Dubai Precast possesses. “Our workforce is unique in a way that we want to do something that’s normally not done. We dare to do something that is not so easy, but would need both the engineering department and very highly skilled workers to make it. We are very proud of our workforce and I think they also appreciate the fact that the company takes the risk of going after the projects we are doing, which are a bit more of a challenge. They are also proud to wear the Dubai Precast name because they know the level of quality they deliver and are known in the industry.”

Working with main contractors on projects such as villas, schools, and hospital staff accommodations, Dubai Precast relies a lot on Elematic’s local presence in the UAE. “One of the really good things about Elematic is that they have a Service Engineer in the UAE. This is very good from our perspective because when we run into problems that we cannot solve ourselves; we know Elematic is nearby, just across the road, in fact. We don’t even have to stock a lot of spare parts in our own storage as their local office is so near,” Pedersen says.

Being able to provide fast and efficient service and spare parts is something Dubai Precast appreciates about Elematic, too. “We have a very good cooperation with Elematic. We get support for any issues. Sales support and spare parts support have always worked well. We’ve always gotten a proper solution within an acceptable amount of time,” Jensen points out.

“We’ve adopted Mikko Hellman, the local Sales Engineer into the company. We once had a problem with the 265 machine where the product was not so good. Mikko helped us find a very good solution, very fast. He went directly to the Service team and sorted out the problem,” Pedersen recalls.