Social housing provider acquires industrial site for construction base
Social housing provider Accord has bought an industrial site to house its off-site homes manufacturing facility.
Accord, which provides affordable homes and social care to 80,000 people across the Midlands, has signed a lease at Airfield 55, a 55,693 sq ft speculative development at Airfield 55 in Aldridge, Walsall being built by Trebor Developments.
The organisation now plans to move to the new site this summer from where it will manufacture its off-site manufacturing closed-panel timber frames.
It will also increase manufacturing to include its own windows and its H-pod, an integrated kitchen and bathroom unit.
Alan Yates, executive commercial director at Accord, said: “Building on our six years’ successful experience of off-site manufacturing, Accord’s vision is to increase production of our award-winning timber framed homes through our successful LoCaL Homes business.
“We have ambitious plans for our new factory and plan to increase annual production to over 1,000 homes per year. We are experiencing real growth in the business by working in partnership with other Housing Associations and Local Authorities across the country.
“Accord is investing over £1m in developing the new factory including high value manufacturing equipment, and we will be able to both meet future orders and create more jobs for local people.”
Matt Tilt, director of industrial and logistics at LSH, who negotiated the lease, said: “There are precious few industrial units of this size and quality in the region and the fact we were able to secure Airfield 55, a high quality speculative development, which is just a few miles from its existing site means that Accord can continue production with little interruption and grow its operations.
“We were able to work closely with Accord to understand the drivers behind its requirement and, with Trebor’s assistance, we agreed fundamental variations to the Airfield 55 building whilst hitting essential milestones in terms of timescale.”
