A Chinese construction firm has struck a £2.75bn joint venture with a social landlord to open six housebuilding factories in the UK, capable of producing 25,000 homes a year.
China National Building Material Company (CNBM), a government-linked private firm which claims to be the world’s leading construction materials company, has agreed the joint venture with housing association Your Housing Group (YHG) and renewable energy specialist Welink.
The consortium is currently seeking sites for six UK-based factories, and is viewing sites in Scotland, South Wales, the North East, the North West, Yorkshire, the South and the South West.
According to Inside Housing:
“IN NUMBERS
- 6: housebuilding factories set to be built in the UK by the new consortium
- £400 per square metre: target construction cost once it is fully operational. The current average in the UK is £1,000
- 25,000: homes built per year by the consortium by 2022
- £2.75bn: investment with £2.5bn coming from CNBM and £250m from YHG
CNBM has a mandate from the Chinese government to build between one million and 1.5 million homes per year in China, and it is keen to test new technologies and methods of construction it can bring back to China.
It hopes to be building 25,000 homes per year by 2022 through this joint venture, with five pilot schemes set to deliver a total of 2,000 homes next year.
The panels for these homes will be built at a factory in Barcelona, before being shipped over to the UK and assembled. The first scheme, in Liverpool, is expected to receive planning permission in January.
Once these schemes are built, the consortium hopes the factories will be operational.
It hopes that when the factory is at full capacity it will bring the cost down from £1,000 per square metre to around £400 per square metre. This will allow it to build homes at social rent levels without grant, according to Brian Cronin, chief executive of YHG.”