Steely resolve - Kanoo's chief talks

Kanoo believes that there is a demand for fabrication.
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Remote
Situated in the very furthest end of Dubai Industrial City, near the Abu Dhabi border it is harder to imagine a more remote location. Although the word ‘city’ is included in the development’s name, in fact open desert surrounds the plant and the dusty access road makes it anything but.

However, there is strategic value in such a barren place, as Mishal Kanoo assures us: “It is very close to Emirates Road, and though DIC is at a nascent stage of its growth right now, most people are of the belief that you are in the ‘booleylands’ out here. We’ll see in a few years if it really is.”

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There is more than one non-free zone industrial estate in Dubai of course.

Kanoo points out: “There are three major areas, Al Quoz is one, Al Awir is another and this will become the third. Jebel Ali is another, but unless you are a freezone company there is an issue with that one.”

He also pointed out that Al Awir is mostly full of business patching up old trucks, and so he was keen to try somewhere entirely new.

We wondered, given the group’s large presence in Saudi Arabia why it had chosen to manufacture in Dubai – particularly considering the amount of oil and gas infrastructure in that country. Kanoo replied simply: “Our plan is to fabricate here and ship it out.

We have [done fabrication in Saudi] in the past, but now the target is to consolidate all the fabrication here.”

Neither does he seem particularly concerned about the competition in what is a fairly crowded sector. With contracts for industrial projects seeming to come up far more often at the moment, and be more lucrative than real estate, there will be established player, as well as those looking to take a slice of the action.

However, if Mishal Kanoo is concerned about the opposition he doesn’t show it.

“We’ll see in a few months if these competitors really exist!”

He added: “With the credit crunch the way it is, courtesy of how the banks are handling the liquidity, which is not very good, we will see how many of these companies can survive.”