House-building factory moving to ex-Alloy premises in west Auckland

Box will built houses like this in an Auckland factory. Image / Supplied

A pre-fabricated house-building business is planning to lease part of the west Auckland premises where superyachts were built for decades.

Dan Heyworth of house-builder Box said his business planned to move into part of the former Alloy Yachts premises, a 900sq m building at 8 The Concourse in Henderson.

Construction of the first modular-style Box house in that factory will start there this month, Heyworth said.

Alloy Yachts was reported last month to have laid off 130 skilled staff due to a lack of orders and its Henderson premises was advertised for sale in the Herald two years ago.

In 2015, its big industrial premises on a 1.8 hectare freehold site adjacent to the northwestern motorway at the Lincoln Rd interchange were advertised for sale. Alloy had occupied the site for 30 years but wound down the business around 2012 after global demand for super yachts plummeted, reports at the time said.

Box has been in the old Kiwi Bacon factory near Eden Park, at 317 New North Rd, Kingsland and Heyworth said once the Henderson premises' overseas owner received regulatory approval from the Overseas Investment Office, lease arrangements would be finalised.

He hoped a number of houses would be under construction in Henderson in the next month.

A 100sq m Box home costs around $300,000 delivered to the site, including all council and regulatory consents, but not including site works such as driveways and other aspects "which can add as much as another $100,000, depending on the site".

A 60sq m Box house would cost around $200,000, he estimated. The benefits of off-site construction were quality control and speed of construction, Heyworth said.

"It takes about eight weeks to build off-site and then another two weeks to install," he said.

Box houses as large as 80sq m could be delivered on one truck, fully clad and fitted out, he said.

"That's in modules, likely to be 30sq m to 40sq m," he said.

Windows, doors and floors will be assembled in modular form for Box houses, then the places will be put onto trucks and taken to sites from Henderson. There, the modules will be joined up and the houses connected to the services, he said.

"Box has been going since November 2011 and designs now number 251. We've built over 100 of those," he said naming sites in Christchurch, Auckland, Nelson, Wellington, Waiheke Island and Dunedin.

"The biggest we've done is a $3m multi-unit development in Parnell with six units," he said.