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Chinese factory pilot ‘to be on site after Christmas’
A pilot scheme of homes built under the innovative offsite partnership between Your Housing Group and a construction company owned by the Chinese government should be “on site just after Christmas”.
Speaking exclusively to Inside Housing, Brian Cronin, chief executive of Your Housing Group, revealed that a scheme in south Manchester should see just over 50 units provided from a plant in Berkeley.
Mr Cronin said: “We’ve still got a partnership with them and we are going ahead to try and develop this first pilot scheme. That’s our focus. If the pilot scheme’s successful, we want to work with them to deliver more. But the bulk of the programme will be divided among the bigger partners. It was never going to be solely us.
“We might do a few hundred to 1,000 units a year. It will be for others to come in and help pick up that volume. What they’re trying to do is get their system down pat so that even small housing associations can take part.”
Last month We Link, the renewable energy specialist running the Berkeley plant, launched a prototype modular home.
Its UK development platform, Live Verde, is currently identifying a site for the first major plant to produce significant numbers of homes.
Stephen Haigh left his role as chief executive of Your Housing to become chief executive of Live Verde when the deal was made in January last year.
Mr Cronin told Inside Housing that Live Verde is currently in talks with other organisations about forming a number of joint ventures, ultimately aiming to produce 25,000 homes a year from six factories at strategic locations around the UK.
The factories are being built by a consortium of We Link, Your Housing and China National Building Material Company, which has invested £2bn into the venture.
Mr Cronin added: “We knew straight from the off that we could never mobilise all the investment that they wanted to put in and so we saw ourselves as working with them to see whether we could bring an innovative solution to the housing market.”
