WASHINGTON – Last November, when Berkshire Hathaway bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation for $34 billion, the world took notice. In Washington State, a small business owner and his team were hard at work with the goal of designing, manufacturing, containerizing, and exporting a manufactured home that could be engineered for seismic resilience as well as be able to withstand hurricane force winds in excess of 100 miles per hour. American Container Homes succeeded and now has a line of “green” housing products that can be folded and collapsed into a standard cargo shipping container and then folded back up in a matter of days. With American Container Homes and Clayton joining forces, economical western style “green” housing can now be delivered anywhere in the world. In spite of a global economic downturn, emerging markets and recurring natural disasters such as Katrina and Haiti have caused the World housing supplies to become millions behind the global demand. With mammoth new housing projects slated across the planet, American Container Homes and Clayton Homes, Inc. can fill the demand by building the world’s first practical containerized housing system in quantities never before available to the world market. The new partnership combines American Container Home’s proprietary foldable mobile-home technology with Clayton’s advanced mobile home manufacturing infrastructure, all packaged within an innovative financing model that allows their housing products to take advantage of the United States Export-Import Bank financing programs. The idea of containerized housing is not new, but previous efforts have focused on recycling shipping containers themselves into homes, resulting in unconventional products with limited niche-market appeal and limited financing options. The new partnership focuses on applying the efficiencies of assembly line production with the efficiencies of rail and ocean logistics, to offer a well known and understood American housing product to the rest of the world. American Container Homes invented the concept and designs, and Clayton Homes, America’s largest manufactured home builder, added the ability to manufacture the product in incredible quantities. The new containerized housing products are engineered specifically for the region they are going to and built to superior structural specifications using green materials, such as composite panels and light gauge metal structural components. “We’ve been really careful in researching the right mix of materials that are not only green, but also fully non-decaying and non-combustible – these things are stronger and more durable than my own home.” says James Weber, President of American Container Homes. Yet surprisingly, their newest designed entry level home, complete with appliances, is expected to only cost around $40,000 FOB. Spanning the entire gamut from 550 square foot single-story homes, to full multi-level apartment complexes, hotels and dormitories, American Container Homes are ideal earth-friendly, long-term solutions, both for developing countries as well as those requiring large-scale relief and reconstruction due to natural disasters like the recent tragedy in Haiti. James Weber, President American Container Homes, Inc. (253) 922-8298

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.