Katerra recently announced that it would build a 577,000-sf advanced manufacturing plant in Tracy, Calif., that when fully operational next year would employ 500 people and be able to pump out 12,500 multifamily modules per year. Katerra is also building three more component plants, and a 250,000-sf mass timber plant in Spokane, Wash., that will produce cross-laminated wall panels and floor systems. Katerra is planning another mass timber plant in the Southeast.When operational, the Spokane plant should produce almost 5 million cubic feet of cross-laminated timber annually.
Founded in 2015, Menlo Park-based Katerra most recently raised an $865 million round of financing in January, led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Other investors include Foxconn and DFJ.
Related Article: Katerra to Open New Modular Panel Plant in Spokane
Katerra has also been making industry waves with its mergers and acquisitions strategy. In June, the company acquired two architecture firms in two weeks — Michael Green Architecture in Portland, Oregon, and Lord Aeck Sargent, in Atlanta, Georgia. After the transactions were complete, Katerra saw its workforce double, and its licensing capacity increase to 31 states and Canada’s British Columbia and Alberta provinces.
Also in June, Katerra announced a merger with Indian manufacturing technology company KEF Infra. The newly formed company of KEF Katerra has already generated $3.7 billion in new business and will focus its attention on projects like hospitals and schools
Offsite manufacturing has steadily seeped into nonresidential and multifamily construction, to the point where a number of general contractors have set up temporary or permanent factories for prefabricating components or for producing modules that can be delivered, virtually complete, to jobsites for quick final assembly and utility hookups.
