Just fab-ulous
Blair van Veld is thrilled with the prospect of setting up a pre-fabricated home manufacturing facility.
Blair van Veld of Twin River Properties stands inside a 7,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Granton and talks about the future. Connected to it is a 1,200-squarefoot office space and tool storage area. If all goes according to plan, by next summer this building will be bustling with activity as Twin River Properties enters the prefabricated home manufacturing business. The new branch of the Pictou County-based family business will be called Twin River Home Builders. The goal is to begin construction of the homes in May or June, but first they need to finalize the manufacturing site. The building is large enough to build two mini homes at a time. Van Veld expects to start with about five employees with the possibility of adding more as the business grows. “My projection is about 20 homes a year out of this facility,” he said. Part of the motivation behind this expansion is to supply his own business’ need for more housing (Twin Rivers currently has more than 1,000 mobile home and apartment units throughout the Maritimes). “We did actually look at buying into a manufacturer at one time. Then we just decided we wanted to do our own thing with it,” van Veld said. “We’ve been thinking about this since 2017ish. It’s not a new thing for us. It was just a matter of getting that right push to get us into it.” He said it will benefit the company by providing cost savings as well as eliminate the need to wait for other manufacturers. “We know our own timelines. We know what we need,” he said. “We have total control and that’s a big thing for us.” Van Veld is proud to say that the work on the manufacturing building has been done almost entirely locally, from financing to construction supplies. “It is very much a Maritime build,” he said. There are still some steps to finish before the new business gets in full swing, like getting proper certification, but van Veld is optimistic about the future. “I’m hoping that down the road we can expand this facility,” he said. “I don’t want to limit myself to just this.” He said there is huge export potential as well within the prefabricated home industry. “Something like $12 million or $14 million worth of homes a year go to the United States out of the Maritimes already,” he said. “That’s been something that continues to grow. That is something we will look into once we get our own processes down.”