Building manufacturer Admares is establishing its first U.S. factory in Waycross, Georgia, the company announced on Wednesday.
Admares specializes in the mass production of buildings in the residential and hospitality sectors. The $750 million factory will produce structures for the housing sector and is expected to begin operations in late 2025.
The company is relocating its global headquarters to the U.S. to fully ramp up its smart factory operations to address the need for housing in the country, Admares said in an email to Manufacturing Dive. There was a 6.5 million single-family home supply gap as of 2022, according to a Realtor.com report.
The upcoming 2.5-million-square-foot facility is also expected to create over 1,400 jobs in administration, management, engineering, IT, logistics, assembly, robotics maintenance and production. Construction is expected to begin in early 2024 and the hiring process will begin later this year, Admares said in an email.
Admares chose Waycross due to its access to major highways and rail connections and its proximity to the Port of Brunswick, Founder and CEO Mikael Hedberg said in a statement.
Georgia’s location on the East Coast is also an ideal site to service nearly the entire eastern side of the U.S. housing market, the company said in an email.
With its shipbuilding and offshore industry experience, Admares’s buildings at the smart factory will use robots and automation lines managed by line workers, according to its website. Robots and assembly line workers will complete the welding, cutting, painting and tiling that construction workers usually carry out.
“With the rise of modern industrialization practices, we have combined our expertise to create a revolutionary robotic-driven manufacturing process that allows entire buildings to be manufactured at a factory rather than on a traditional construction site,” Hedberg said in a statement. “With our advanced technology, we are adopting successful practices that are common in other advanced industries.”
The building manufacturer has been collaborating and prioritizing smart factory investments in recent years. In December 2021, Admares announced plans to build six fully automated and robotized factories within the next five years, including in the Middle East, U.S. and Europe.
In October, Admares entered into an agreement with Siemens to deploy Siemens’ software to design its smart factories. The software will be used for creating, analyzing, documenting and managing Admares’ products.
