W. R. Grace & Co. (Grace) is a world-leading international specialty chemicals and materials company (NYSE: GRA), is celebrating the official grand opening of a new regional head office in Dubai, United Arab Emirates today. Grace is a leading global supplier of catalysts and other products and services to petroleum refiners, catalysts for the manufacture of plastics, silica-based engineered and specialty materials for a wide range of industrial applications, specialty chemicals, additives and materials for commercial and residential construction and can sealants and coatings for food packaging. W.R. Grace and Company was founded in 1854, in Peru, by William Russell Grace, who left Ireland due to the potato famine and traveled to South America with his father and family.