Olympia Steel Buildings Review: The Markham Kit Seller, Decoded

Reading Time: 13 minutes

Where We Stand

This review is written by a shipping container yard in Brantford, Ontario. We are not affiliated with Olympia Steel Buildings, in Canada or the United States, we receive nothing from them, and we sell the steel box that competes with the smallest buildings in their range for the same gravel pad, which makes us an interested party and says so. Everything about the companies and their buildings below comes from olympiasteelbuildings.ca and olympiabuildings.com, their compare and application pages, and their BBB and directory listings, read on September 15, 2026. Where we describe a limit, it is one the company’s own specifications, warranty or kit description make plain; we make no claims about how either company conducts itself. This page follows the same template as the Metal Pro rigid-frame review, because the two companies sell the same object, the bolt-up rigid frame, and deserve the same questions.

The Two Olympias, and the Two Domains

The first thing an Ontario buyer runs into is that there are two Olympias with the same name and two near-identical websites. Olympia Steel Buildings of Canada is at 60 Renfrew Drive, Suite 210 in Markham, describes itself as Canadian steel building experts since 1988, delivering from coast to coast, British Columbia to Baffin Island in its own phrase, and lists with the BBB as accredited since 2006; a directory also places it in Stouffville. Olympia Steel Buildings in the United States is a family-owned company at 400 Island Avenue in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, also since 1988, delivering nationwide across the states and selling American-made steel. The Canadian site says it owns its factory and the American site says the same; whichever plant the steel comes from, it arrives on a flatbed the way a container does. Both use the same warranties, the same building system and the same catalogue of applications, and the Canadian domain ends in .ca while the American one is olympiabuildings.com without the word steel. Quote from the Canadian company, in Canadian dollars, with Canadian engineering, and confirm which entity the contract names; the sites are close enough that a search lands on either. Neither is the Olympic Buildings that also appears in Ontario searches, which is a separate company. The Toro arch review notes a similar shared-address quirk in the Toronto arch market, and the lesson is the same: read the contract’s letterhead.

What a Rigid-Frame Kit Is

Olympia does not sell arches. It sells the pre-engineered rigid frame: welded steel I-beam columns and rafters, bolted together on site into portal frames, spaced along the length and tied with steel purlins and girts, clad in Galvalume roof panels and coloured wall panels, on a foundation the buyer pours to the company’s anchor-bolt drawings. It is the building system behind most warehouses, hangars, arenas and larger workshops in the province, and its virtues are exactly the arch’s limits: vertical walls to the eave, any width the engineering allows, clear height that does not fall away at the sides, and a roof pitch chosen rather than inherited. Olympia’s catalogue runs from a backyard garage or workshop through barns, warehouses, mini-storage, churches, cannabis facilities, aircraft hangars and riding arenas, and the compare page argues its case against the pole barn, the wood post-frame building that competes for the same farm. The kit-against-box comparison is our own comparison from the other side, and the pole barn page covers the wood alternative both companies are arguing with.

Strengths First

The strengths are real and they are the strengths of the rigid frame done by a company that has been at it since 1988. The frame is the strongest thing on this site short of a container’s corner posts: welded I-beams bolted into portals, carrying the site’s snow on an engineered roof with no interior columns, and warrantied for 40 years. The panels are Galvalume only, with the roof at 26 gauge in the AZ55 coating grade and a 40-year limited rust-through perforation warranty, and the wall and trim colour coat, a siliconized polyester, carries its own 40-year limited paint warranty, which is the longest paint promise in the category. The kit arrives precision-cut with a construction manual, and a rigid frame goes up faster than any wood building of the same size because the members are few and large. The company runs its own factory rather than brokering someone else’s, on both sides of the border. And the range of applications is the widest in the Canadian market, from a two-car garage to a hangar, on one system. The stacking-rated container roof is the comparison for the one building that beats a rigid frame on snow per square foot.

The Kit Reality: What Arrives and What Does Not

What arrives is the steel: the frames, the secondary members, the panels, the trim, the fasteners and the drawings. What does not arrive is everything that turns steel into a building, and for a rigid frame the list is longer than for an arch. The foundation is a real one, with anchor bolts set to a template in piers or a perimeter footing, poured by your contractor to the company’s drawings before the truck comes. The erection needs a crew and a telehandler or a crane, because an I-beam rafter is not a thing four friends lift, and most buyers hire an erector rather than doing it themselves. The doors, overhead and walk-in, the windows, the insulation and vapour control, the gutters and the interior are options or the buyer’s, and the lead time between deposit and delivery is the company’s schedule. None of that is a criticism of Olympia; it is the shape of a pre-engineered building, and the buyer who prices the kit as the building is the buyer who is surprised. The pad a box needs is the pad a box needs, which is a morning’s work beside a rigid-frame footing, and the HIAB set-down page is the only lift a container ever needs.

The 40-Year Warranties, Read Closely

Three promises, and the words matter. The 40-year steel frame warranty covers the structural frame against defects, which is a promise about welded I-beams and a good one. The 40-year limited rust-through perforation warranty on the roof covers a hole through the panel from corrosion, which Galvalume makes rare; it does not cover surface rust at cut edges and drilled holes, fastener corrosion, leaks at panel laps or damage to what is under a leak. The 40-year limited paint warranty covers the colour coat against chalking and fading beyond stated limits, prorated, and it is the promise most likely to matter in year fifteen when a barn’s south wall has gone pale. All three are conditional on a building erected to the drawings and maintained, and none covers work the buyer or the erector did. That is standard for the category and it is not a trick, but three 40-year figures on a brochure read as a warranty on the building and they are warranties on the frame, the coating and the paint. Ask for the documents before the deposit. Three decades of container lifespan figures is the comparable figure for a corten box, and it is about the whole object.

Ontario Snow and the Rigid Frame

The rigid frame carries snow well because it is engineered to the site’s load rather than sold as a stock building, and the site’s number is the one that goes on the order: about a kilopascal along the Lake Erie shore, two and three times that in the snowbelt east of Georgian Bay, the Ottawa Valley and the north. A frame ordered for Brantford and built in Parry Sound is the failure the engineering exists to prevent, so the drawings are stamped for the address, and the drift loads at a lean-to or against a taller neighbour are part of the calculation. Where the rigid frame differs from the arch is the roof: a low-pitch panel roof holds snow where an arch sheds it, which the engineering accounts for and the buyer does not have to, and a standing-seam or PBR panel roof with a sealed lap is what keeps the snowmelt outside in March. The arch buyer’s quonset guide is the arch side of that difference, and whether a given building can go on a given lot is your municipality’s call, so check with your local building department before you order.

Rigid Frame or Arch: Which Steel for Which Job

Ontario buyers cross-shop Olympia against the arch sellers, and the honest split is by shape. The arch, from Future, Toro, Norsteel or Pioneer, is the cheapest clear span per foot at 30 to 100 feet wide, sheds snow by its curve, and gives up the wall: the first few feet at each side are under a curve, and racking, benches, doors and a barn wing fight it. The rigid frame, from Olympia, Metal Pro and the pre-engineered dealers, costs more steel per foot, needs a crew and a crane, and gives vertical walls, any width, clear eave height, a chosen pitch and a building that other buildings attach to. Farms buy the arch for the machinery shed and the rigid frame for the arena; businesses buy the rigid frame for anything with an overhead door on a wall, a mezzanine or a lease. The Future Buildings review is the arch seller decoded on the same lines, and the steel buildings guide for Ontario is the category page above both.

What to Confirm Before You Sign

Nine things, in the order the money moves. Which Olympia the contract names, and its address. The exact width, length, eave height and pitch, written down. The panel gauge and the Galvalume grade for roof and walls, with the coating standard. The site snow and wind loads the stamped drawings are engineered for, and that the drawings are included. The anchor-bolt plan and the foundation drawing, and who pours it. Which doors, windows and trim are in the quote. Whether erection is quoted, and by whom. The delivery window and what happens to the deposit if it moves. And the three warranty documents, with the exclusions read. The same list, minus the engineering and the erector, applies to any building on a pad, and the grade checklist for a box is the equivalent checklist for a box, where the whole conversation is the grade and the doors.

Against the Other Canadian Steel-Kit Sellers

The honest answer is that the Canadian rigid-frame market is a handful of credible suppliers and their dealers selling the same object, compared on the same lines: the frame system, the gauge and coating, the warranty wording, what the kit includes, the engineering, the lead time and the deposit terms. Olympia’s distinctions are its 1988 founding, its own factory, the three 40-year warranties, the breadth of applications, and the two-company structure that a buyer has to read carefully. Metal Pro is the Mississauga name most often priced beside it on the rigid-frame side; the arch sellers are a different shape. The Mississauga rigid-frame review is on this site, the Future review precedes this one by a week, and the Norsteel review sits between them. Collect the quotes on the same nine lines and the differences show in the doors, the erection and the delivery terms rather than in the steel.

The Steel Building That Arrives Built

A shipping container is the other steel building, and the two are worth setting side by side. Olympia’s smallest kits, the backyard garage and workshop, compete with a 20 or 40-foot container for the same gravel pad, and on that ground the box arrives built: a corten steel shell, welded, with a floor, a roof rated for six loaded boxes stacked on its corners, doors that seal and lock, and no foundation beyond a level pad and blocks under the corners. It is set in an afternoon, needs no crew, no crane, no anchor bolts and no erector, and it can be moved when the plan changes. The rigid frame’s ground is width, height and the wall an overhead door hangs on: a container is 8 feet wide and 8 feet 6 inches tall, so a two-bay shop, a warehouse or an arena is frame work. The pairing is common: the rigid frame as the shop, the container beside it for what has to lock or what the shop has outgrown. The sea can dimensions sheet has the interior figures, and container storage against a warehouse lease is the business version of the same choice.

For the buyer whose kit turned into a box, the unit is the one line we can speak to from the yard. A workshop starts from a one-trip 40-foot high cube shop shell from the one-trip rows behind the yard office at 90 Morton Avenue East, foamed and fitted with a man door and a roll-up at the shop bay that cuts the doors before it leaves; a storage box is a used wind-and-watertight 20-foot dry lockup from the used rows out front, picked by number before any money moves. Every unit lands anywhere in the coast-to-coast-of-Ontario delivery area in one to three days with payment on delivery. Everything is sold outright; Van Blanc keeps no rental fleet.

What to Buy: Rigid Frame, Arch or Container

An Olympia rigid frame is built for a workshop with an overhead door on the wall, a warehouse, a hangar, an arena or any building that will have a mezzanine, a lease or a second building attached; price the foundation, the erector, the doors and the insulation in from the first quote, read the three warranty documents, and check the contract’s letterhead. An arch is the clear-span shape sold for machinery and hay. A container is the building for the shop or the storage that has to be there this week and has to lock: it lands built in one to three days, sits on a level pad with no foundation or erector, and plenty of businesses that put up a frame shop keep a box beside it as the lockup. The shop-or-box-or-barn hub is the wider read for anyone still deciding what kind of building the job needs at all.

The two pages that finish this one are the container shop conversion, which takes a foamed box through bench, power and doors, and the tool crib container, for the months between the deposit and the shop.

Reach Van Blanc in Brantford

We have been supplying shipping containers across Ontario since 1995. Our yard is at 90 Morton Avenue East in Brantford, and we deliver right across the province with payment on the day of delivery. No deposit, no upfront wires, no chase-the-paperwork.

Van Blanc Ent. Inc., 90 Morton Ave E Unit 1B, Brantford, ON N3R 7J7, 519-754-6844 (cell) or 1-888-509-6658 (toll-free).

If the steel kit you were pricing turned into a box that arrives built somewhere in this page, call with what the building is for and your postal code and we will tell you on the spot what is in stock and when it can land. Worth the drive for unbeatable quality, family customer service with 30 years of experience.

Related Reading

• Metal Pro Buildings: The Mississauga Rigid Frame, Reviewed
• Future Buildings Review
• Container vs Metal Building Kit
• Container vs Pole Barn
• Steel Buildings in Ontario: The Guide