John Rowland, president and co-founder of S2A Modular, is expanding his California-based modular building company with the construction of 35 net-positive manufacturing facilities across the country, according to Forbes contributor and Zonda vice president of programming Jennifer Castenson. The first factory being built will be outside San Jose, California, but the modular builder also has plans for Wisconsin, Texas, and Florida in the U.S. and Canada, Haiti, and Puerto Rico outside of the continental states.
Rowland believes that in year one each factory will be able to build 500 homes and after that the investment in the construction of the factory is already paid off. Each factory takes six months to build with prefabricated, carbon neutral parts from a facility in Florida. The parts are shipped to the destination and assembled in 50 days.
There are multiple lines in a factory and each line takes about 100 skilled employees to run, resulting in a finished unit coming off the line every two hours. Realistically, Rowland anticipates that in the first year, a factory running only one shift could produce 500 homes, growing to 750 homes in the second year and to 1,000 homes in the third year.
If the factories run more than one shift, the capacity would be about 2,000 units per year from each factory. So, with 35 facilities, Rowland is ramping up to between 35,000 and 70,000 homes per year around 2025.
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