Chinese firm finds success building modern prefab rooms for UK

Crane says there are some UK-based modular construction companies, but they face the challenge of high manufacturing costs and a lack of scale for their projects.

"UK factories are modern, high-tech and expensive to run, so the businesses can't afford to have an empty factory for one day because the overhead is huge and they need to continuously generate money. So they limit the number of modules they build each day," says Crane.

That means a UK modular system factory may take a few months to build a 200-room hotel, but even that became difficult when the recession hit and orders dropped.

But CIMC MBS does not face that problem because its production lines in China mainly focus on shipping containers, so there is continuous work coming in on a large scale, and when a big modular system order is received it can be finished in a short space of time.

CIMC MBS established offices in the UK in 2011 when it acquired the modular system design company Verbus.

Verbus was established in 2005 and has worked with CIMC MBS in transporting modular units. It was hit badly by the recession as clients became conservative and switched to traditional construction.

CIMC MBS saw value in Verbus and felt optimistic about the growth of modular construction in the UK, so it acquired Verbus, which at the time had three employees. The team has grown to 10 staff members, who mainly talk to UK companies and communicate their needs to the Chinese headquarters.

Crane says one big change that has greatly facilitated the company's UK growth is the decision two years ago by CIMC subsidiary CIMC Capital to finance some of the company's projects in Britain.