COMPANY PROFILE
Amphibex Responds to Market
Norm Grant and his family manufacture portable dredges
named Amphibex that have many functions and are sold all
over the world. The company, Normrock Industries, is based on
innovation and constant response to what the market needs.
By Judith Powers
Norman Grant says he was “born between a piston
and a crank shaft.” The fifth child in a family of 12,
and the oldest boy, Grant was born in the Matane
area of Quebec and raised in Ville D’Anjou in eastern
Montreal. His father was a mechanic, and Grant spent his
childhood years in mechanical pursuits, which became his
trade when he reached working age.
“It was common sense that I would be in fabricating,
repairing and building because that was my father’s trade,”
he said.
He operated and repaired equipment in Northern Quebec,
Newfoundland and other areas of Canada before joining
Overseas Consultant Services, a U.S. company, as a consultant.
While on a job in Africa, he became interested in
environmental, floating excavating equipment.
“We were doing work in water with excavators on barges,
including rock breaking,” he said.
Because of problems that occurred, he saw a need for
creating the right equipment for these activities. Upon his
return to Canada, he purchased a small Finnish machine
which was too small for the job, so he built his own machine,
which was the Model AE300 Amphibex, a combination of
the words “amphibious excavator.” The vessel was capable
of suction dredging and mechanical excavation, including
rock breaking.
In 1987, he formed Normrock Industries, Inc., based
in Terrebone, Que., to produce environmentally friendly
machines for dredging and other on-water jobs.
Over the years, he has developed eight more Amphibex
models, all with the same capabilities, each one
Above: The AE1200P and the AE400E – the largest and smallest of the eight units Normrock produces. Each model has
the same capabilities, on different scales. The AE 1200 is 18.3m long (60 feet) with a dredging depth of 10.2m (34 feet,
5 inches). The AE400 is 10.85m (35 feet, 7 inches) long with an excavation depth of six meters (19 feet, 8 inches).
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