In 1956, Luigi Mion left Italy for Canada, looking to build a new life.

Within a year, he had landed in Ottawa and co-founded Central Precast, a company manufacturing precast concrete products. 

Today, Central Precast has spun off into three separate companies – Central Precast, M CON Products and Utility Structures – under the umbrella of The Precast Group. Located in Nepean and Carp, the companies create a range of products including landscaping and utility products, manholes, as well as concrete pipes and box structures for city infrastructure.

“The market (in Ottawa) was never really big enough for one particular product line,” explains John Mion, the president of The Precast Group and Luigi Mion’s son. “We had to be really diversified.” 

Like father, like son

In the early ’80s, John Mion joined his father at Central Precast, working alongside his brother, uncle and cousins.

“It was the type of thing where everybody worked here in the summer,” Mion says. “We had three cousins, one at each of the different facilities.”

That family tradition continued throughout the decades – Mion’s own three sons now work at The Precast Group. 

The business has worked on a range of projects over the years, including Nortel’s facilities in the ’80s as well as facilities for big-name retailers such as Home Depot, Canadian Tire and Walmart. The firm’s most recent project was a new Amazon facility in Quebec.

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