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Large UK house builder reopens timber frame factory
One of the largest house builders in the UK has reopened the timber frame manufacturing facility it acquired as part of a merger last year.
Today, Vistry has reopened what it described as a “mega facility” in the East Midlands, which it took ownership of as part of its combination with Countryside Partnerships.
Vistry announced in November last year that it had completed its £1.2bn merger with Countryside, with the new combined company becoming the second-biggest house builder in the UK, behind Barratt Homes.
The newly branded Vistry Works East Midlands factory is a 356,000 sqft facility that has the capacity to deliver in excess of 6,000 homes per year.
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The house builder said the combination of the new factory and its existing two factories in Warrington and Leicester with a delivery capacity of 5,000 homes for the full year 2024.
This will “create a strong strategic asset for the group to deliver [modern methods of construction] MMC at scale”.
The new factory is expected to deliver over 2,000 homes in its first year of operation, with approximately 40% of these for new sites.
In addition to supplying new homes with open panel frames for the group’s mixed-tenure Countryside Partnerships business and housebuilding business, the new MMC facility will facilitate the delivery of homes to meet the Future Homes Standard, which comes into operation in 2025.
Scott Stothard, manufacturing and special projects director at Vistry, said: “Vistry’s investment in the relaunched East Midlands timber frame facility creates the capability for us to capitalise, at scale, on the benefits of factory manufactured construction, delivering high-quality sustainable homes faster and more economically than traditional methods of construction and in a more environmentally friendly way.
“As well as the opportunities this brings to help address the housing shortage, the relaunch of this new facility will be a boost to local job creation, creating a positive socio-economic impact in a region which is important to us.”
The news comes at a time of heightened focus on MMC, with two of the biggest players pulling out of the volumetric modular space.
L&G Modular Homes announced in May that it would “cease production” of new homes at its factory. While modular Ilke Homes entered administration at the end of last month with a “significant majority” of its 1,150 staff made redundant.
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