DSF is located in Friden within the Derbyshire's Peak National Park.

DSF is also a processor and supplier of crushed and graded refractory raw materials for other applications such as coloured road-stone.

By the 1960s, the business diversified into supplying other industries including steel, glass and cement.

[1] Nowadays the brickworks at Friden makes high-alumina refractory bricks and blocks which are exported worldwide for use by the heat containment industries, such as glass, cement, steel and petrochemical manufacturers.

Despite the closure in the 1990s of the nearby silica pits which supplied raw materials, the company remains a major local employer.