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Prototype home shipment marks next stage of Australian rollout.
Finnish industrialised housing company ADMARES says its proposed Queensland smart factory project remains on track.
Speaking with Built Offsite, ADMARES Australia CEO Damian White said the business still expects the project to move into the next stage at the end of 2026 or early 2027, with broader production timelines remaining substantially unchanged from earlier projections.
“We’re working through all the procedural elements of establishing the factory and expect to be operational by early 2028.”
The company first formally launched Australian operations in late 2025, positioning South East Queensland as the preferred location for its first Australian manufacturing facility. Unlike many conventional modular housing manufacturers, ADMARES describes its approach as industrialised housing production, combining robotics, AI systems, digital twins and automotive-style manufacturing processes within a large-scale factory environment.
The proposal centres around a highly automated manufacturing facility designed to produce volumetric housing units through repeatable assembly-line processes rather than traditional site-based construction methods.
ADMARES has previously indicated the Queensland facility could produce approximately 13,680 building units annually, equivalent to roughly 4,500 to 5,000 homes per year depending on dwelling configuration.
Prototype home forms next stage of Australian rollout
A key milestone for the Australian operation will be the arrival of ADMARES’ demonstration home later this year.
The prototype is currently under construction in Finland and is expected to be completed in July before being shipped to Australia following inspections by international stakeholders and potential customers.
“We’re scheduled to be completed in July,” White said.
“We’re having some people from Australia fly over, but also interested parties from Europe and the US who will take advantage of seeing it while it’s on site in Finland.”
White confirmed the home is expected to arrive in Australia around October, subject to international shipping conditions.
The prototype will provide the first local opportunity for developers, investors, housing providers and government stakeholders to physically inspect the ADMARES system.
“High quality,” White said, when asked what he hoped visitors would take away from seeing the home in person. “The primary aim of the activity is for customers to inspect our product for quality.”
Although the prototype is being assembled manually rather than within the future automated production environment, White said the same materials and manufacturing logic are being applied.
“Exactly the same materials are going into the prototype,” he said.
“As closely as possible, we’re replicating the processes and sequences that would take place in the factory.”
The company also confirmed that discussions tied to earlier letters of intent covering future production capacity remain active.
“We continue to be in active discussions with the customers who have signed the letters of intent, and we’re actively speaking with further potential customers,” White said.
According to White, the strongest areas of customer interest continue to centre around “price, quality and delivery certainty”.
Renders of the housing model ADMARES intends to introduce to the Australian market through its planned Queensland industrialised housing operation.
Industrial manufacturing focus shapes positioning
ADMARES positions itself as an industrial manufacturing platform for housing delivery rather than a modular housing company.
That distinction remains central to how the company describes its production model.
“We’re talking about the industrialised production of a fully manufactured, high-quality product using advanced manufacturing processes, automation, and robotisation,” White said “We don’t have a reliance on skilled construction labour. There’s heavy use of robotics and AI, and the quality assurance and quality control process is embedded through the whole digital journey.”
ADMARES’ public positioning has increasingly focused on digital twins, factory simulation, integrated software systems and production modelling tied to partners including ABB Robotics, Siemens, Porsche Consulting, MHP and EDAG.
White said those digital systems allow ADMARES to simulate factory performance and optimise production before physical operations commence.
“We’ve now simulated the factory twice through the digital twin and proved the productivity and takt times the engineering teams projected,” he said.
The broader Queensland proposal remains ambitious in scale, with earlier ADMARES projections outlining a facility employing thousands of workers across multi-shift operations supported by robotics and automated manufacturing systems.
Despite the scale, White said the company believes the Australian market has become increasingly receptive to the industrialised housing concept.
“I don’t believe our language has changed,” he said. “I think we’ve grown in confidence in terms of how receptive the Australian market is.”
“We’ve always been very careful not to use the term modular when we talk about our products. We’ve always positioned ourselves around industrialised manufacturing.”
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