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Housing market analysts say many more homes in North America could be pre-fabricated in plants
Hansen-MacDonald is optimistic that the prefab market is growing, and he already estimates that about five per cent of Canadian homes are built off-site. Prefabricated housing, in which a home or more often parts of a home, such as walls, are built inside a factory rather than on site, has long been seen by experts as a way to improve HanMac Capital, an investment firm owned by the family of Clearwater co-founder Colin MacDonald, is already a majority investor in Ontario-based AXYZ Automation Group, whichfor the construction industry.
Now, AXYZ is planning to release a new class of machines in October marketed to small- to medium-sized homebuilders that want to automate parts of their processes.
"If you want to start producing prefabricated housing across Canada, not every company can afford to build a $100-million factory," said Luke Hansen-MacDonald, MacDonald's son and the chair of AXYZ. "A lot of the players that work in this industry, they want to partially automate, which is what we do. " AXYZ, based outside Hamilton, Ont. , in Waterdown, specializes in CNC router machines, an automated tool that uses computer software to precisely cut materials, such as wood or metal.
Hansen-MacDonald said AXYZ, which has sold thousands of machines around the world, spent the past 18 months developing machines specifically targeted for residential buildings, such as three- or four-story apartments or much larger residential towers. He estimated the machines will cost several hundred thousand dollars apiece, with the exact price varying.
"We're talking about a machine that you feed in a 20-foot piece of material and it would become a wall," said Hansen-MacDonald. Based on the designs of the building, the CNC machines cut spaces for a door, window, staircase, vent or whatever the case may be.used in the auto sector to housing construction to obtain efficiencies of scale and other benefits, such as year-round work.
The often-invoked metaphor is that it would be more expensive to build a car in your driveway than it is to build off-site in a modernized assembly plant. Hansen-MacDonald and others emphasize that when it comes to pre-built housing, a spectrum exists: An entire house can be built inside a factory and shipped to the end site, but it is also possible to build select parts inside a factory and ship those.live in housing that is unaffordable to them — defined as spending 30 per cent or more of their income on shelter costs.
The Carney government has emphasized that it sees pre-built or modular housing as a solution to the country's deepening housing affordability crisis, and said in its"Our belief is with the federal government's focus on it, this will become a larger market over time," said Hansen-MacDonald. , in which thousands of municipalities across the country each use their own zoning and bylaws to police what types of homes are built.
The lack of uniformity in codes makes it difficult to produce anything at scale, they say. This city's housing plan is a rare success story in the global affordability crisisThe advantage that his company has, he says, is that the other companies targeting small and medium Canadian homebuilders are all located overseas in Europe or Asia.
Hansen-MacDonald said he hopes to tap into the wave of national pride, embodied in the Buy Canadian motto, and at the same time help address the housing crisis and grow a business.
"The prefab industry is a tricky one because in Canada only five per cent of houses are prefab," he said. "But if that turns to 10 per cent or 20 per cent, this is a huge opportunity. "
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