Irmarfer established their North American facility in Las Vegas in 2016 and provided a structure used during the MTV VMA Awards in Los Angeles last month.
Irmarfer Structures, created in 1998, is a family-owned company with its global headquarters in Portugal. The company has emerged as a sought-after manufacturer of tents, stages, and flooring systems in Europe, serving the corporate, sporting, fashion, music, film, and special events markets.
Their heavy-duty, durable staging systems have been used for a variety of high profile events ranging from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil to the recent MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles last month, and last year opened their first facility in North America in Las Vegas.
A Strong Foundation
Since it was founded, the company has continued to expand, and in 2014, Irmarfer Structures opened a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant measuring close to 430,000 square feet. The number of employees as grown as well, topping 230 in 2015. They manage everything from logistics, storage, manufacturing and assembly, aided by the latest technologies to provide a growing array of clients and collaborators with products that meet the highest standards of quality and safety.
The Irmarfer Structures product line now includes everything from the classic and popular A Frame tent, with a modular design that lets the A Frame be built as a single, double, or triple decker structure, to structures large enough to house commercial or military aircraft of almost any size. Both temporary and permanent hangar structures are available.
An Olympian Achievement
With its experienced and creative construction and design team, Irmarfer set a world record at the 2016 Summer Olympics when they constructed the world’s largest temporary tent structure, which housed the catering facility for 7,500 athletes.
Along with the sheer scale of the project — Irmarfer shipped 400 sea containers with more than 9,000 tons of materials for the 1,312-by-262-by-75-foot structure — the tent’s design did not require a supporting pillar in its center. Instead, 80 arches were used — but again, not in the usual way. These arches were on top of the tent fabric rather than beneath it.
The safety factor for the tent design promised the ability to withstand winds of up to 373 m.p.h. — well over the highest wind speed ever recorded on earth. Twenty generators were needed to feed the air conditioning system of this giant. It took 60 Irmarfer technicians five months to assemble.
“The truth is that few believed a tent like this would be possible to build,” states Júlio Ferreira, project manager at Irmarfer. The Olympic tent’s design was unique enough to require the company to modify the design of its factory production line, and even the cranes that installed the support arches had to be updated. “There are so many detail, and so much applied knowledge that even our competitors, having seen the structure of the tent, will not realize how it’s done,” added Ferreira.
Other South American Projects
There might not be a summer Olympic spectacle in Brazil this year, but there will be the 2017 edition of the mega-sized Rock in Rio music festival. Rock in Rio, a semi-annual Brazil event with affiliated festivals staged in Lisbon, Madrid and Las Vegas, returns to Rio de Janeiro this month (Sept. 15-24), and Irmarfer is supplying the structural components for the main World Stage and other structures at the site.
In preparation, Irmarfer shipped 80 tons of tent materials across the Atlantic from Portugal. Adopting a pure white design for 2017, the 288-by-72-foot World Stage at Rock in Rio will also include scenery and new graphic features with an expanded load capacity to accommodate all the show design elements needed by the various performers and headliners.
Another company milestone in South America is a 75,347-square-foot structure in Lima, Peru for a Cirque du Soleil festival.
North American Expansion
While Irmarfer products have supported events in North America in the past, 2016 proved to be another milestone for the company’s expansion strategy, with the establishment of their first facility in North America, located in Las Vegas, NV.
This facility has helped Irmarfer support projects in the U.S., including a temporary structure erected adjacent to the L.A. Forum, where the 2017 MTV VMA Awards were staged on Aug. 27. The temporary structure assisted with the red carpet festivities and celebrity interviews prior to the show.
By using one of Irmarfer’s large tents, the production team was able to run lengths of truss along the length, and also across, the oval-shaped tent’s width, providing rigging points for a multitude of moving lights, LED eye candy, TV lighting fixtures and scenery.
Along with its functional properties, the tent also served as an architectural scenic element, with light beams emulating from floor trusses washing its skeleton frame in color. Celebrities entered the tent and mixed with TV interviewers, paparazzi and fans before entering the Forum for the main event.
Irmarfer’s tent, chosen to meet the event’s needs for strength, safety, functionality and looks, reflects the company’s legacy for innovation. With a number of patents registered with Europe’s OHIM, Irmarfer’s name “has become synonymous with quality, ingenuity and innovation,” says company president Ivo Silva.
Earlier this year (February), Irmarfer also became a member of AGES — the Association of Global Event Suppliers. AGES, founded in June 2014 and based in Switzerland, is a nonprofit organization with a mission to elevate the quality and reliability for temporary structures used at major events.
Strong, Yet Lightweight
Although its products are designed for strength, Irmarfer also strives to provide components that are relatively light in weight and easy to assemble. Silva credited the “increased efficiencies and structural integrity in our high performance structures” for allowing this relatively lightweight design to be able to support “lights, truss, sound systems and decor weighing up to 660 pounds per joint on our suspension systems.”
While crediting its designers and other employees, Silva also noted that Irmarfer has systems in place to keep the design innovations coming. The company’s R&D efforts include a technological developmental research center that studies, tests and finds the most appropriate solution for a variety of different events. Irmarfer also operates a training school. Like the company’s many other initiatives, it reflects Irmarfer’s underlying commitment to total customer satisfaction.
Company Snapshot
Irmarfer Structures
- When Founded: 1998
- Global HQ: Freamunde, Portugal
- President: Ivo Silva
- North American Subsidiary: Irmarfer US
- USA HQ: Las Vegas, NV (since 2016)
- USA Contact Info: Irmarfer US, 6957 Speedway Blvd, Suite 106, Las Vegas, NV 89115; www.irmarferus.com; www.irmarfer.com/en.
