The era of the factory-built house has kicked off in earnest after building giant Weston Homes’ £12 million, 75,000 sq ft house-building factory in Essex opened for business today.

West Homes claims its huge Braintree Logistics Centre is one of the most advanced in the UK and will enable its customers to choose every aspect of their homes’ internal design and construction.

Components for 5,000 homes-a-year are to be made at the facility, which is making bespoke orders for home buyers initially at a rate of 60 properties a day. The factory will begin making all components of a house, effectively making it an end-to-end house factory.

“Within the next 10 years technology will allow for new homes to be fully manufactured off-site by robots and computer-assisted engineering tools,” says Bob Weston, the company’s group Chief Executive.

This includes sinks, worktops, flooring, wardrobes and bathroom cabinets and Weston Homes predicts it’s the future of house building and that all new homes will be pre-constructed off-site by robots in ten years’ time.

“Our Braintree Logistics Centre transforms Weston Group’s logistics and off-site manufacturing capacity and enhances our ability to control our supply chain, improve the delivery of customer specification choices and ensure the quality of the products that form the specification of the homes we sell,” says Shaun Weston, its Managing Director.

“Weston Group has a £2 billion development pipeline of 6,000 new homes and this new complex helps us manage this expansion. Streamlined processing and inventory also allows for significant cost efficiencies and reducing the processing time for customer orders.”