Construction 3D Printing Company Mighty Buildings Opens Factory in Mexico to Scale Climate-Resilient Homes

Mighty Buildings, the Oakland-based additive construction (AC) company, announced that it has opened a new factory in Monterrey, Mexico, to scale up production of its prefabricated, climate-resilient homes. Last October, Mighty Buildings completed what it referred to as “the world’s first” 3D printed, zero net energy (ZNE) home.

In addition to the use of proprietary, concrete-free building materials, Mighty Buildings’ design achieves ZNE through the installation of solar panels on the roofs of its prefabs. The Monterrey facility will produce parts for 1-2 homes per day, for Mighty Buildings’ development projects in Southern California, the first of which is in Desert Hot Springs.

In a Mighty Buildings press release about the new factory, the company’s CEO, Scott Gebicke, commented, “With the opening of our factory in Monterrey, Mexico, Mighty Buildings has taken a major step forward in the accelerated growth and adoption of sustainable, net-zero energy homes. This also demonstrates our unique ability to drive the future of home construction by setting up scalable manufacturing operations close to where they are needed, enabling Mighty Buildings to rapidly serve areas in urgent need of climate-resilient housing, and to meet the needs of our developer partners.”

For geographical perspective, Monterrey is just under a three-hour drive away from the US border town of Laredo, TX, which, in turn, is about a 20 hour drive from Desert Hot Springs to its west, and a 14 hour drive from northern Florida to its east. Thus, the location allows for rather quick shipping from factory to build-site in Desert Hot Springs. Theoretically, a customer could order a home on demand, and once the parts start being made, it could go from production to delivery within 72 hours.

Moreover, the new facility also puts Mighty Buildings within what is even more favorable striking distance of the southeastern US. Not only that, but Texas, itself, has become something of a hotbed for AC projects. For a company that’s specifically targeting customers on the premise of climate resilience, establishing a perch right at the midpoint of the Sun Belt is an inspired strategic move. Beyond a long-term business advantage, the siting of the factory should also play no small role in augmenting Mighty Buildings’ ambitious emissions targets.

Should Mighty Buildings catch on in the areas of the US most immediately in need of broad-sweeping climate resilience solutions, the company has put itself in position to maintain or even improve the carbon footprint created by its shipping operations as it expands. That is, the more homes that it sells between Monterrey and Southern California, and between Monterrey and Florida, the more sense it will make to eventually create additional facilities located equidistantly between each US coast, and central Texas.

Already, that hypothetical next step in the process would add another, even more significant aggregate reduction of Mighty Buildings’ distance from its likeliest points-of-sale. It is a subtle detail, but this is the sort of move that illustrates a company that is thinking about how to put itself in the position where success can realistically breed more success.

Images courtesy of Mighty Buildings