Bunnings invests $75m in a changing home-build market

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Wesfarmers’ earnings powerhouse is expanding its commercial business but also preparing for major changes in residential construction.

Investment in plants such as the 8500-square-metre Truganina shed housing robots that assemble and nail-plate together A-frame trusses puts Bunnings up with Dahlsens Building Centres, Bowens and Independent Hardware Group as a leading maker of trusses and frames, the first part of a structure to go up on a slab.Finished product: The just-in-time plant produces wall panels and roof trusses to order for large and small clients.

The strategy behind selling frames and trusses – which make up about 15 per cent of the cost of a home – is that it establishes a supplier’s relationship with a builder at the start of construction and makes it easier to sell other products throughout the typical nine-month construction process.

But the move to a highly automated plant that produces large wooden framing – once made on site by carpenters – also prepares suppliers for what Tim Moore, the managing director of consultancy Industry Edge, said would be a “massive rationalisation” of the home-building sector. “The largest participants in the market are making the next logical step and it could be that some of their thinking is getting ahead of a global trend toward entire houses being built inside factories,” Mr Moore said.

When running at full strength, the Truganina plant will put 20,000 nails into 1200 lineal metres of wall panels across two shifts a day.

 

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