Amo Realty

A Finnish company is about to make a big splash in South Georgia. Admares, based out of Turku, Finland, recently inked a deal to construct a 2.5 million square foot manufacturing facility for housing in Waycross. Situated along a greenfield site on Highway 23, the factory will create more than 1,400 jobs. Production of the modular houses and buildings is expected to start sometime in 2025.

The competitive bidding process for the project was led by Elizabeth McLean from the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s Global Commerce team. Her agency worked with Georgia Quick Start ,Georgia Power, and the Waycross and Ware County Development Authorities to get the ball rolling on plans for the new facility.

Meanwhile, Admares is in the process of relocating its headquarters to the United States. However, the company has not stated where it is specifically looking. Given that its first “Smart Factory” – a term the company uses to refer to its high-tech, highly automated and robotized manufacturing facilities – will be located in South Georgia, there’s a very good chance that its headquarters could end up somewhere in that part of the state too.

Located roughly 200 miles south of Atlanta, the new factory will construct entire buildings that can then be shipped and erected elsewhere. Admares’ cutting-edge, robotic-driven manufacturing process eliminates the need for construction sites manned by large construction crews. The company’s Smart Factories can build single-family homes, townhouses, and multifamily buildings.

Admares has partnered with two European tech giants to power its upcoming manufacturing facility: Porsche and Siemens. The latter company is on board to help Admares develop its robotic manufacturing capabilities. According to Admares, its proprietary system shrinks construction and installation timelines by five times.

The announcement of the new modular housing factory was welcome news to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who has been promoting his Rural Workforce Housing initiative for some time. The governor’s latest budget for the state allocated $35.7 million for the development of rural workforce housing. The issue is more concerning than ever in a state where the average home price has skyrocketed over the last few years. In the first quarter of 2019, the average price for a home in GA stood at $369,000. At the end of 2022, that figure had soared to $582,000.

As of 2022, there was an estimated 6.5 million supply gap for single-family homes in the US. In many parts of the country, developers struggle to access the workforce necessary for major construction jobs. Admares, which has focused primarily on shipbuilding and offshore industries in the past, is touting its Smart Factories as solutions to this ongoing issue.

The technology behind the upcoming Smart Factory in Waycross is intriguing. Each structure designed by the plant will have a “digital twin.” Digital twinning is a method used in the development of complex physical products that allows for testing, monitoring, and simulation via a digital representation of the physical object. Buildings produced in Admares factories are equipped with sensors that provide ongoing access to various data points about the structure, including indoor air quality.

According to Admares, the firm was able to construct an entire building in Brooklyn with the technology in just two days. The factory in Waycross will be able to churn out everything from single-family homes to multifamily buildings. It will employ managers, administrators, engineers, and IT specialists for assembly, production, robotics maintenance, and logistics. Admares will also be investing $750 million in Ware County as part of the deal.

With the housing crisis especially acute on the East Coast, building a modular housing factory in Georgia makes sense. Waycross offers many benefits to manufacturers like Admares, including close proximity to major freeways and access to a plethora of rail connections. The city is also relatively close to the Port of Brunswick on the Atlantic coast, providing an easy way for supplies and products to be shipped and received from around the world.

The upcoming Waycross Smart Factory is just one of six planned by the Finnish company. The firm also plans to develop fully automated and robotized factories in the Middle East, Europe, and other parts of the US over the next five years.