Triumph Group of Companies has taken over the old Pillsbury Plant in Midland and will soon be the home of a semi-automation prefab housing facility. PrimeFab will begin production this March in the 100,000-square-foot building on 36 acres of land. Mario Ribeiro, CEO of Triumph Group of Companies and PrimeFab, said the facility will manufacture all the components that will build the home. “We’re using AI technology to automate and speed up the process of making it more standardized,” said Ribeiro. The building process could see homes being built almost four times faster than current production rates. “Building a home on site would take about a month to put together and to frame and clad and install windows and all of that, while doing it the way we do takes about a week, four to five days, actually,” said Ribeiro. Once completed, the facility will be able to produce approximately 1,500 linear feet of wall panel per day. “Our max wall panel size is 20 feet wide by 12 feet tall, and that equates to about 600 panels a day,” said Jesse Page, plant manager at PrimeFab. “About three 1,700-square-foot homes.” Right now, PrimeFab will produce two kinds of prefab construction with aluminum frames meant for high-rise buildings and wood frames for projects up to six floors. “We could do a tiny house, or we could do a 20,000-square-foot home. It’s all broken into pieces, like Legos,” said Ribeiro. “Put together on-site very fast and gives extreme flexibility to the end user.” Ribeiro and the rest of his team are taking a special pre-built product to The Buildings Show in Toronto on Dec. 3-5 to showcase what they hope is the future of how homes are built. Midland Mayor Bill Gordon said he is pleased to see manufacturing companies make their way back to Midland. “Manufacturing has a rich history in our community, and it’s great to see the former Pillsbury plant getting a new lease on life, especially with something that’s connected to the housing industry and the critical shortage of housing,” said Gordon. He added this type of construction could one day become a more common way to build homes, if successful. “You really need to be able to do this at scale and with consistent quality to make sure that the people that are buying your product and assembling the homes are happy and continue to place their orders,” said Gordon. “I see this as being a proving ground for this relatively new form of construction. A potential career fair could take place in February with production running smoothly by next spring.
