Supermix

Supermix is a Miami ready-mix concrete and block producer that started in South Florida in 1989 as Central Concrete Supermix, with two batch plants and 22 trucks. It’s tied to the Dias family, whose Concreto Supermix runs a large ready-mix business in Brazil, but the U.S. company is based in Miami on SW 74th Avenue. Today it runs 17 locations, 22 batch plants and more than 200 trucks in Florida, and since 2006 it has made concrete block at an automated Superblock plant in Medley. It sells from Miami-Dade up to Indian River County. Supermix is the concrete supplier on the Waldorf Astoria Miami, the Property Markets Group supertall where the structural mix was dialed back from 16,000 to 12,000 psi.

The mix catalog is where this supplier distinguishes itself, and the numbers are specific enough to design against.

The ultra-high-performance line is rated above 22,000 PSI with a minimum modulus of elasticity above 6,500 KSI. The high-strength line exceeds 8,000 PSI. Heavy-weight concrete is offered across a 180 to 350 pound per cubic foot density range, which is ballast and radiation shielding territory rather than ordinary structural work.

Specialty placements get their own formulations: tremie concrete for underwater work, draincrete and pervious mixes, structural lightweight, low-permeability concrete, and shrinkage-reduced concrete. Pump mixes are formulated separately for 2-inch, 3-inch and 5-inch hose pumps, which is the kind of detail that decides whether a pour goes smoothly on a tight site.

Self-compacting concrete, shotcrete and flowable fill complete the ready-mix side.

The masonry catalog is unusually deep for a concrete producer. It runs from commercial column block and knockout block through ladder and truss wall reinforcement to precast lintels, cavity caps and Zonolite masonry fill insulation — enough that a mason can source the wall and its reinforcement from the same supplier as the slab.

Roughly 50 South Florida projects are named in the portfolio, and the list is a fair map of the region’s last two decades of construction: Brickell City Centre, Icon Brickell, One Thousand Museum, the Frost Science Museum, Jade Signature in Sunny Isles and Coral Springs City Hall. Towers, a science museum and a city hall put very different demands on a mix design, which is the practical argument for the breadth of the catalog.

The company has grown by acquisition as well as construction, buying Continental Florida Materials, Inc. in 2012 and opening a Grand Cayman operation in 2013.

Leadership has stayed with the founding family. Bernardo Dias is president, with Felipe Dias as executive vice president and Daniel Dias as administrative vice president.

Industry memberships include the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, the Florida Concrete and Products Association, and the Masonry Association. The operation is based at 4300 SW 74th Avenue in Miami, reachable at (305) 262-3250.