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From Trends magazine published on 22/10/2020

A factory-made home

Building a home in the traditional way is intensive in terms of time and work. It has to be possible to do this faster and more effeciëntly. This thought is what triggered the founding of Skilpod. The company builds turnkey homes in two weeks.

Filip Timmermans, co-founder and manager of Skilpod, is convinced the classical way of building is a finite story. "Too much hassle and hugely time-consuming," he says. When Timmermans, an engineer, had building plans in 2010, he started looking for alternatives to the classic building process. Together with Jan Vrijs, a lawyer, and with the support of investor Raymond Cretskens, he founded Skilpod in 2012. They started off in a 300 square meter production studio in Meeuwen. In the beginning, the focus was on small projects, such as garden offices and home extensions. "Systematically, we evolved into compact homes, for example for family caregivers," Timmermans continues. "That's how we came to be on the radar of larger players, such as housing corporations in the Netherlands. Our biggest order is the production of about a hundred homes for the Woonstichting Texel."

Today, Skilpod manufactures the homes in a warehouse of almost 10.000 square meters in Geel. Due to the corona crisis, some large orders were postponed. "Fortunately, we had already decided at the beginning of the year to focus more on the private market again," says Filip Timmermans. "During the vacation months, the number of requests doubled. There's a lot of interest from investors who see our properties as an alternative to an investment apartment."

With increasing standardization and automation, Timmermans says it should be possible to double production capacity from 100 to 200 units per year. "Right now we are still a manufacturing company," he says. "We want to evolve into an assembly formula with factories that we can easily replicate and roll out internationally."

Published: 22 October 2020