DMC

DMC was founded in 1956 as a "machine maintenance and tooling department" within Anonima Castelli, the historical furniture maker which had been founded in 1877 in Bologna and had later moved to Imola. In 1957 it was officially entitled DMC, an acronym standing for Divisione Meccanica Castelli (Castelli Mechanical Division). It was led by Vittorio Tassoni and Nerio Dal Rio, who perfected machines that had been acquired from other companies to improve their performance as required by Castelli.

The first turning point came in 1962, coinciding with the time Paolo Ponzellini had joined the company, when ideas were first floated to sell a few of the machines that had been produced internally, thanks mainly to Tassoni's inventive genius. The first products to be marketed were vertical and horizontal sanders. Strangely enough, all these machines bore women's names – Monica, Barbara, Gloria, Letizia – all playfully borrowed from daughters of a successful Bolognese machine salesman. The company immediately stood out for its high-tech products. Especially considering that at the time hollow-core panels, which were far from perfectly flat, were commonly used, and consequently sanding operations were not simple. But thanks to the "Monica" sander this problem was solved and results were excellent. Shortly after came "Barbara", a sander-polisher for polyester that was a great success in Italy, France, Belgium and Spain. In 1967 the company moved to Toscanella di Dozza. DMC products, well conceived and offering exceptional tolerances compared to the competition, soon climbed to the top global ranks in their industry.

The second turning point came in 1972, helped among other things by special international political conditions. It was the time of Ostpolitik, the normalisation of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet Union initiated by the German Chancellor Willy Brandt. After establishing several trade agreements, German producers flooded the Soviet Union markets with their products, leaving high and dry a number of Western European markets. DMC then moved in to fill the void in such markets with its high-tech sanders whose performance and quality were equal or superior to those of German competitors. It accelerated its internationalisation process and experienced a great commercial success. The DMC machines, thanks also to their reliability and consequently low maintenance costs, conquered the European markets and the company recorded a sales boom, with an expanded workforce of 100 employees and a massive recourse to subcontractors. During those years Vittorio Tassoni, Nerio Dal Rio and Paolo Ponzellini became part of the Castelli corporate structure. These were years of international success and of personal recognition, notably for Tassoni, who was awarded by Acimall for his innovations. SCM began to show interest in the company starting from the mid-1980s, and by 1987 DMC joined the SCM Group, which was already represented in the wide-belt sanders field by Sandya S.p.A. It was a period of great acquisitions which aroused great interest in the industry. By becoming part of the SCM Group, DMC reached a new industrial, financial and organisational dimension that strengthened its competitive market position. And so, DMC became the biggest world producer of sanding machines, judging by both sales and number of shipped products.

In recent years DMC has expanded its range of products, so that now, in addition to offering complete automated sanding solutions to the furniture and housing industries, it also markets solutions for processing surfaces of metals and advanced materials.