Reinforcing the future since 1948

In 75 years, AGF has built more than 40,000 projects—decidedly an impressive number! But above all, it has left its mark on the building of Canadian and international communities.

In recent years, AGF’s teams have worked on 3,000 projects annually. Civil, commercial, industrial and residential engineering works: the company is everywhere, its expertise and its work force building the future. Here are some of the milestone projects in its history.

Built between 2015 and 2018, the Champlain Bridge represented a significant challenge for the AGF team, since the schedule was extremely tight. This meant that preparing the drawings for the shop, fabrication and execution had to move at a rapid pace.

Seventy-five AGF steelworkers, 20 plant workers, and 31 engineers and technicians contributed their expertise to this major link between Montreal and Brossard on the South Shore.

The 2000s saw the extension of Highway 30 between Châteauguay and Vaudreuil-Dorion, a major project for AGF, where Maxime Gendron cut his teeth as project manager.

Between 2008 and 2011, AGF’s teams completed 7.2 kilometres of Highway 25, including a cable-stayed bridge over the Mille-Îles river.

Each day, I would start by certifying the required pours, then I would record my observations to provide feedback to the drawing room and the plant, so the work could be adjusted. Every detail is critical to the installers’ success”, explains Maxime Gendron.

The Réseau Express Métropolitain (REM) has become a big project for AGF. This light rail network will make a significant contribution to public transit in the Montreal region. Since the spring of 2018, the work has required more than 12,000 metric tons of steel: caissons anchored into the ground, pier columns and headers, rebar production and installation for 18 LRT stations, two bus stations and two service buildings.

In Ontario, AGF worked on the Ottawa Light Rail Transit (OLRT), also known as the Confederation Line, which runs east-west through Canada’s capital and includes three tunnels a few kilometres long downtown, as well as several stations. 

In Toronto, AGF Rebar also helped build the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, a 19-kilometre east-west light rail line.

AGF has been very involved in several sports infrastructure projects.

In the three years leading up to the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, 300 Acier Gendron workers laboured around the clock to build the stadium, pool, velodrome (which became the Biodome in 1992) and other infrastructures for the Olympic Park.

Then the Cape Town Stadium in South Africa was built on the Atlantic coast to host the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. This stadium was designed to accommodate 64,000 spectators and is one of AGF’s success stories.

More recently, the 2015 Pan American Games held in Ontario is the largest multi-sport event in Canadian history. To accommodate the participants, 10 new sports complexes were built and 15 others were renovated.

With a breakthrough in South Africa in the early 2000s, AGF participated in the construction of a rail link between the airports of Pretoria and Johannesburg, as well as the Cape Verde Stadium for the 2010 Soccer World Cup (FIFA) .

Then there was the major Abdul Nasser Overhead Road project in Kuwait which required 172,000 tonnes of reinforcing steel.

Quite a success for AGF!

From timid beginnings on a few residential projects, to increased participation in large-scale commercial, institutional or civil engineering projects, over the years AGF Costa Rica has carved out a fine place for itself in this tropical region.

Take for example the Circunvalación Norte viaduct or commercial towers in the Sabana sector in San José. Both are flagship projects. The viaduct connects important roads in the country. Works started in 2018 for the fabrication, cutting and bending of 12,000 tons of rebar, in collaboration with the local strategic partner – Arcelor Mittal.

The first country in South America where AGF started its operations is Chile. And it didn’t take long to participate in major projects, starting with the Hospital Felix Bulnes in Santiago. AGF installed 12,000 tons of reinforcing steel there, which were manufactured in the factory of our partner at the time – Torres Ocaranza. It was rather rare to do so in this country, where they were still used to manufacturing everything on the site.

On the Peruvian side, AGF began operations in 2015. Market development efforts have led the company to its largest project in Latin America: the metro in Lima, the capital of Peru. Work on the metro tunnel began in 2019 with the Consorcio Constructor Metro Lima 2. The metro circuit will span 35 kilometres.

Two years after its breakthrough in Peru, AGF settled in a new market in Ecuador by founding INTTEGRA, in partnership with the Belgian group Bekaert, and by opening a manufacturing plant in Quito.

Then in 2021, AGF joined forces with the Spanish company Ferralia to bring Ferralia AGF Colombia into the world. Rather than opening a factory in this country, the new entity entered into an agreement with the Gerdau steelworks, as a supplier of cut and bent rebar.

Each Latin American market is approached with its particularities and in Colombia, Ferralia AGF offers a service of installation of rebar, formwork and concreting.

Since 2022, AGF has been involved in the construction of the longest submerged tunnel in the world for the entire section of reinforcing steel, i.e. 350,000 MT.

The Fehmarn Belt, which will include road and rail routes, will connect Denmark to Germany and replace a ferry service.

Specialized machinery will also have to be designed and fabricated to build the tunnel segments, and a team of 42 engineers, supervisors, foremen, and administrative and logistical support personnel will need to be recruited and managed so the work is completed on time and on budget. Some 750 steel workers will also be assigned to the site.