Vögele pavers prove their worth on high-specification GTA projects

The busiest section of Highway 403 near Mississauga, Ontario, carries more than 200,000 vehicles per day. When Fermar Paving Limited was awarded the high-profile paving contract to rehabilitate the highway, they knew that stakes were high and there was no room for error.

GTA contractor seeks flexibility and versatility from its equipment solutions

Fermar started as a small paving contractor 62 years ago and has since grown into a full-service general contractor capable of delivering complex jobs in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). And, as a family business, Fermar's vision is to be the safest and best-managed construction service company in the GTA, providing innovative solutions that adapt to customers' changing needs. They run a mixed fleet of paving equipment, which they use to their advantage.

"Having a mixed fleet gives us flexibility and versatility. Different machines can perform under different applications. Having multiple brands allows us to match the right paver to the right job," says Mike Cabral, asphalt operations manager at Fermar.

Fermar decided to invest in new pavers for the 403 and other major highway and municipal projects in the GTA. The contractor's deliberations over which machines to purchase went beyond specs and price tags. The right pavers for these specialized jobs need to handle increasingly complex, high-specification work while supporting the skilled crews who operate them every day.

That led to Fermar's demo of Vögele's Super 2000 highway-class pavers. "We tried them because of the strong reputation they have in the industry for precision innovation and quality of finish," says Cabral.

Paver trial delivered consistent results on a tight schedule

The company trialled the Super 2000 pavers on a large municipal contract for the region of Halton, Ontario, in 2025. The job, which spanned four years, was a full rehabilitation project that included crossfall specifications and a total of 60,000 tons of hot mix. All of the surface work was done with the Vögele pavers over the final two months of the project.

The Fermar team was impressed with the results. "[The Vögele pavers] deliver a high-quality mat. As a contractor working with municipalities and the [Ontario] Ministry of Transportation, performance and consistency are important to us. We wanted to test a paver that helped us deliver tight tolerances; deliver a smooth, consistent mat; and keep productivity high on projects with tight schedules," says Cabral.

"A big part of our decision to go with Vögele pavers is that [the] large project on Highway 403 near Mississauga [requires] a million square metres of milling and 170,000 tons of hot-mix asphalt that will run through the pavers," explains Kevin Martin, Fermar president and chief executive officer. The project has a stringent smoothness specification, which spans 8 kilometres of mainline paving both west and east — 16 kilometres in total — with four lanes, including high-occupancy vehicle lanes and interchanges.

Cabral adds, "The pavers have been proven to be reliable, consistent, and well-suited for the large-scale mainline projects and tight specification projects that we've performed so far with them. They provide crews confidence on long, continuous highway paving and mainline projects."

Vögele's variety of equipment options meet multitude of project needs

Vögele pavers are divided into five product classes: the mini, compact, universal, highway, and special class. They cover a range of pave widths from 25 centimetres to 18 metres (10 inches to 59 feet) and deliver a variety of equipment options and screeds to meet the needs of a multitude of construction projects.

Fermar has run some smaller Vögele pavers over the years, but the purchase of the two Super 2000s in October 2025 was their first foray into Vögele's highway class. The Super 2000 has a nominal output of 186 kilowatts, basic width of 3 metres (10 feet), paving width of 8.6 metres (28 feet 3 inches), and a maximum laydown rate of 1,400 tons per hour, featuring high compaction technology and plenty of power.

"The highway-class application is where Vögele really performs," says Richard Perzan, vice-president of sales — construction and forestry central at Brandt, Fermar's dealer partner for Vögele pavers. "We've seen a lot of companies in Ontario and other parts of North America winning paving awards for smoothness and rideability after they've paved with a Vögele." He says the screed makes a big difference, delivering "good initial compaction and also consistency."

Another strength of Vögele, according to Perzan, is the way the pavers are laid out in terms of weighting. "They're very sturdy and well weighted, which helps that stability and allows the asphalt to be laid in a very consistent manner. That's where Vögele gets a lot of their rideability successes."

Cabral agrees. "We appreciate the control and street performance with the weight of them. It helps us achieve things like compaction a lot easier. The overall stability of Vögele pavers is really good. Consistent material flow, smooth grade control, and intuitive operator controls help the crews produce a high-quality mat with less of the crew being involved. These features provide better ride quality, improved consistency over longer hauls, and increased efficiency."

Durability is also important. Fermar has day and night crews, so equipment is running 24 hours a day over the course of the three-year Highway 403 project. They have found the Vögele pavers to run well in a variety of conditions.

A trusted solution for high-stakes projects

On Highway 403, where stakes remain as high as ever, Fermar's Vögele pavers are now proving the trust they earned during their trial run. What began as a demo on the Halton project has evolved into full confidence on one of the region's most demanding highway rehabilitation contracts. The stringent smoothness specifications, tight tolerances, and around-the-clock paving schedules that initially made Fermar consider their equipment choices are now exactly why they're glad they made the investment. For Fermar, the journey from trial to trust wasn't just about finding pavers that could handle high-specification GTA projects — it was about finding partners in precision that would support their crews and their reputation for years to come.

"We're proud of our people, and we appreciate what they bring to the table every day," says Martin. "Our purchase of the Vögele pavers was part of our company's commitment to providing our employees with the right tools to do a good job."

On the 403, where there's no room for error, that trust is being validated with every metre of smooth, consistent asphalt laid.

Sabrina Cataldo is senior copywriter at Brandt.

This article originally appeared in the March 2026 issue of Heavy Equipment Guide.