DAMPA_75_years_of_quiet_design_ENG - Flipbook - Page 180
DAMPA’s investment spree and particularly its attempted
diversification proved far costlier than had been anticipated.
A loss of 54 million kroner was recorded in 1986 and in the
following year the loss was 26 million kroner. Fortunately, as
the company had around 50 million kroner in capital, it was
able partially to offset the deficit and being owned by F.L.
Smidth helped too.
Ole Ewald’s tenure as managing director lasted less than
two years. His successor in 1987 was an earlier former
DAMPA employee, Uffe Henriksen, who had been sales
director between 1975 and 1982. He set about achieving
savings wherever possible and quickly abandoned the furniture production to concentrate solely on ceilings – but the
loss in 1988 was 80 million kroner. F.L. Smidth, which was
itself restructuring, then decided to try to sell the troubled
subsidiary.
More positively, in the same year an order was won which
was believed to be the world’s biggest ever for ceiling panels
up to that point. The requirement was to cover an area of
250,000 square metres inside the Islamic University in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, designed by the Canadian architect
Arthur Erikson and the architectural firm of Webb Zerenga
Menkes Housden, both of Toronto.
In addition, DAMPA opened sales offices in Toronto and
Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia giving an increased global sales
presence. In the latter, it occupied space in the premises of
the East Asiatic Company.
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Bahrain National Museum, KHR Architecture, Knud Holscher, circa 1990
This project led DAMPA to enter into a licensing agreement
with a Saudi-owned business in Dubai which employed
Lebanese migrant workers to produce ceiling panels for the
Middle Eastern market. Another license was issued in Singapore to cover South East Asia. Both were regions experiencing significant economic growth with a rapid expansion
in the construction of large commercial and public buildings.
DAMPA supplied the licensees with painted and perforated
sheets of steel and acoustic felt, the licensees’ main task
being to profile the panels in a hydraulic press, which
DAMPA also supplied. A key reason for this arrangement
was that profiled panels were impossible to pack efficiently
for shipping as each one had depth for rigidity and to contain the felt inlay. By supplying the ingredients in flat form,
they could instead be tightly and efficiently packaged, saving expense and risk of damage en route.
