Page 30 - HW October 2019

frame & truss
WHAT’S THE STATE of demand? Mike van der Hoek, FTMA Chair and MD at Thomsons ITM, confirms that the Auckland market has been “patchy” for some time and that Tauranga and the Mount too have somewhat come off the boil.
Even the Waikato has “caught the bug”.
“The heat has gone out of the market. It’s definitely slowed,” underlines Mike, citing a raft of barriers to demand such as interest rates, consumer uncertainty and house prices.
Funding out of the banks has been another factor: “They’ve definitely tightened up – you hear a lot of builders talking about having to finish one project before they start the next – that might not be a bad thing.”
In contrast, other players have been experiencing strong demand for the first half of this year with up to two months’ worth of forward bookings in hand in some cases.
“There’s optimism but we’re waiting to see,” says a guarded Steve White, National Sales Manager at Pryda.
Having adjusted some of PlaceMakers’ frame & truss capacity, National GM Sales & Manufacturing, Blake Bibbie, admits that the expected demand “hasn’t yet run in the door”.
Demand has been skewed by significantly increased multi- unit, multi-storey and terraced residential activity, especially in Auckland, he says, with the knock-on effect benefitting concrete and steel instead of frame & truss which has been picking up the “leftovers” in the form of internal framing.
Admitting that most frame & truss plants he deals with are not at capacity right now, Mike Stanton, Technical Marketing Manager at MiTek NZ, also believes however that the market has now worked through this period of uncertainty and has picked up again.
Another to note the effect of more and more multi-unit, multi-storey work, Mike says: “I think our fabricators have adjusted to that change and, rather than going out, builders are going up and I think the fame & truss industry has acknowledged that change and is looking at different ways of building or different way of producing frame & truss and that’s really exciting!”
DON’T NAIL IT, SCREW IT!
Talking of different ways of doing things, another ongoing development is the increasing willingness to offer screw fasteners by many frame & truss operators looking for increased strength and greater safety in the plant, not to mention the
UK all for prefab,
but it comes at a cost
The UK housing industry is as gung ho about prefabrication as any. Preferring to use the term“offsite manufacturing”instead of
prefab (the word has negative connotations in the UK), this year no less than three shows are devoting all or a substantial part of their floor areas to various forms of prefab, panelisation or modular construction.
• Offsite Construction Show (20-21 Nov 2019) – Now in its fifth year, this London show is supported by peak prefab industry body Buildoffsite (www.buildoffsite.com) and attracted 2,000+ attendees last time around. https://offsiteconstructionshow.co.uk/
• UK Construction Week (8-10 Oct 2019) – Offsite also forms a big part of this major UK show, a big drawcard being the participation of the Construction Innovation Hub and its recently-launched Platform Design initiative, designed to encourage innovation in offsite construction for a range of UK Government projects such as schools, hospitals and prisons. https://www.ukconstructionweek. com/
• Offsite Expo (24-25 Sept 2019) – A new show for 2019, we’ll find out more about how it went and report back. http://offsite-expo. co.uk/
Given the need for homes in the UK is far more substantial than
New Zealand’s, it’s no surprise that the promise of scale has attracted serious interest from some serious players.
It’s equally salient to point out however that the level of investment required means offsite isn’t a short term game.
Take Legal & General, which invested £23.2 million into its Legal & General Modular Homes venture during the last year and has injected more than £90 million into the business since 2015.
The latest accounts however show L&G Homes Modular reporting an operating loss of £20.6 million last year, one positive being that was a lot less than the £46.15 million loss reported in 2017.
Reflect then on top of this that L&G Homes Modular can only build 3,000 homes a year on its“pulse assembly line”(a lean manufacturing / assembly technique where all parts move to the next stage together and at a fixed rate) at the factory near Leeds.
When it will reach that target is unknown currently, with only a handful of quite small run projects thus far completed since the first deliveries late last year.
Indeed, in an interview with the Sunday Times, a company spokesperson has said that its business plans had always stated
that a number of years of upfront investment would be needed “to develop the products and processes required to enable the business to deliver profitably at scale”.
www.legalandgeneral.com/modular/
FTMC 2020 is confirmed!
FTMA NZ has announced that its next conference will take place on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 September 2020 at Te Papa in Wellington. The previous event in Rotorua in September 2018 was the first for some
years and was a notable success, with attendees numbering in excess of 100. The closing speaker was Sir John Kirwan, who spoke about his rugby career
and personal experiences with mental illness, earning a standing ovation.
www.ftma.co.nz
28 NZHJ | OCTOBER 2019
MORE AT www.hardwarejournal.co.nz