Billionaire Kiwi brothers Nick and Mat Mowbray are buying plots of burned beachfront land in Malibu as the Zuru Group founders push ahead with plans to manufacture cut-price factory-built houses on a global scale.
US media reported this week the brothers’ company, Zuru Tech US LLC, was on the deeds and state registration statements tied to nine Malibu land sales since March.
The plots on La Costa and Carbon beaches in Malibu sold for a total of US$65 million ($110.7m), The Real Deal real estate news website reported.
The “prime ocean-front real estate” located among swathes of Los Angeles devastated by wildfires in January, could make good case studies for Zuru Tech’s “digital solution for construction” of homes and buildings, The Real Deal reported.
Nick Mowbray declined to comment when contacted by the Herald today, but a source close to Zuru Tech said the brothers had increased their initial purchase of nine plots to 14 and “plan to redevelop them with like-for-like houses to help the rebuild in LA”.
Mowbray has previously told Bloomberg Zuru’s housing business was set to “dwarf everything we’ve ever done”.
The toy and consumer goods entrepreneur also spoke about the construction venture at the China Business Summit in Auckland last month.
Building 12 properties to redevelop the wildfire-destroyed Malibu beachfront would be one of the first projects, Mowbray told those at the summit.
He also said the company hoped to have its cut-price, factory-built houses ready to take to customers within two to three years.
The concept was formed more than a decade ago, but few announcements have been made public on how the company was progressing its aim of developing factory-style house-component manufacturing on a global scale.
Covid and other factors had pushed back its market launch, Mowbray said.
“We’ve been working on this for a long time, but I would say hopefully in the next two or three years, we think we can start working with customers.”
The venture was revolutionising how houses were built, Mowbray said.
“We’re optimising everything from design, compliance, manufacturing, all the way through to assembly. And we’re building the world’s first factory that has a fully customised input in terms of design and a fully automated output.”
Zuru had invested heavily in the new venture – more than it had into its consumer packaged goods division – although Mowbray wouldn’t give specific figures.
The company was developing full-scale test houses using its in-house building information modelling software, named Dreamcatcher, every week or two out of its full-scale Chinese test factory, which was roughly 3ha in size.
It had also purchased a 10ha factory in China, which Mowbray confirmed would be the first commercial factory for the construction business and aimed to produce the equivalent of 10,000sq m of buildings a day.
Six hundred hardware and software engineers were working fulltime on the development of the factory, he said.
The two Mowbray brothers were last year named the country’s wealthiest people on the NBR Rich List, knocking packaging, property and investment magnate Graeme Hart off the spot he’d held for more than 20 years.
Zuru is wholly owned by brothers Mat and Nick, who the NBR estimated were worth $20 billion.
The company was started more than 20 years ago and spans three divisions – toys, consumer goods and construction. It employs more than 5000 staff across more than 30 locations worldwide.
Nick Mowbray told NBR in June last year Zuru was on track to hit $3b revenue that year, with a plan to grow to $10b of annual turnover within the next five years.
Zuru is also in the midst of a four-week civil trial in Auckland after taking its former partners in a nappy business to court claiming tens of millions in losses from breached confidentiality and restraint provisions.
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.