Inside Fletcher Building's high-tech house factory, where they turn out two homes a day
Wednesday, 16 October 2019
Fletcher Building has opened a giant factory in South Auckland which can turn out two prefabricated homes a day.
The Clever Core factory in Wiri was developed in an enormous warehouse once used to store vast quantities of soft drinks for Coca Cola.
The high-tech factory will produce the core structural components of a home in a factory environment, which can be trucked to a building site and assembled, with homes able to be put up and finished within six to 10 weeks.
German precision-cutting machinery ensures cuts are accurate to within half a millimetre.
**READ MORE:
* The real reason Fletchers is building at Ihumātao
The factory, which was opened by Housing Minister Megan Woods, produces wall, floor and roof components, and was run by a team of 20 staff.
Because of the way the factory was designed, there's no heavy lifting needed from operators, meaning women were at no disadvantage, and two of the staff were women.
While the factory will provide prefabricated homes for Fletcher Living, which develops residential subdivisions in Auckland, and further afield, in around a year the company intended to seek external customers.
Fletcher Building chief executive said the Clever Core factory also produced very little waste - less than a rubbish bag per home made on site.
Woodchippings were shipped to Golden Bay to be used to generate energy at a Fletcher-owned concrete factory.
“Our Clever Core facility will produce core components for at least 500 new homes each year, including 100 by the end of this calendar year,' said Taylor.
“Clever Core will initially support our Fletcher Living developments, but we plan to extend the offering to group home builders and retirement home operators in the future.
'Once production is at scale, we believe Clever Core will play a pivotal role in helping the industry deliver more quality, healthy homes that Kiwis love, faster.”
The new high-tech site at Wiri would employ 35 people, from technicians and engineers to carpenters.
The first order of 100 homes was set to be delivered and finished by the end of the year.
Fletcher Living’s developments at Ormiston, Swanson and Beachlands would be the first to receive Clever Core structural components, which would speed up delivery and allow people to move in before Christmas.
Auckland mayor Phil Goff welcomed the factory's opening as it could help speed up the supply of new homes in the city.
'You can't build houses in the 21st century like you built them in the 19th century,' he said.
'Why the hell weren't we doing this 10 years ago?'
Goff said consenting had accelerated in Auckland, with more homes consented in June, July and August than in the whole of 2012.
The Auckland population was still growing at 40,000 people a year, he said.
Woods said off-site manufacturing could transform the building sector, and the government had streamlined consenting for prefabricated homes.
She said in some countries 80 per cent of new builds were of homes manufactured off-site, while the proportion in New Zealand was around 10 per cent.
Taylor said New Zealand needed factories making homes to provide jobs, and lift productivity, but also to prevent the country from needing to import prefabricated homes from countries where there might be lower labour standards.