Founder Profile: Housing Reinvented

I grew up in South America and went to the US for college. After graduate school, in 1991, I co-founded a wood product company manufacturing furniture and construction products in South America for the North American market. Over the next 15 years we grew the company into an enterprise with 2000 employees, operations in 5 countries, and markets across the globe.

 As we grew the company and extended our reach into new markets we noticed a common problem: most countries still rely almost exclusively on traditional brick and cement for construction, which is slow and expensive. Housing and social infrastructure needs are very often not met because these traditional construction methods exceed budgetary capacity and take an extraordinary amount of time to complete.

In that common problem we saw an opportunity to introduce an innovative construction system that would reduce cost and time, while being capable of meeting local building codes, and being culturally acceptable to the end user. We convened a product development team with that goal in mind and, after several years of study and experimentation, developed the core aspects of our innovative Vantem Construction System.

Vantem manufactures and supplies a proprietary construction system that is based on an innovative Structural Insulated Panel that reduces costs and time while increasing thermal efficiency by up to 500% over traditional Construction methods.

Our panels are fully structural, therefore no additional steel or concrete reinforcement is needed, which reduces cost and time. Our panels are large and light, so two people can erect a 30 ft panel without heavy equipment, reducing labor cost and time.

 Our panels are made with an innovative proprietary Cementitious surface skin that is weather resistant, so they can be directly painted upon and do not require additional cladding or weatherproofing, further reducing material, labor cost, and time. Finally, the core of our panel is made from a highly efficient insulation material, EPS, that makes our walls up to 500% more thermally efficient than traditional concrete and brick.

Vantem sells complete construction kits made with our panels usually to construction companies that use them to reduce costs and time and increase thermal efficiency in their projects.

The end customers for Vantem’s products are governments, private companies, and private individuals. Our system is used to build social homes, schools, and university campuses for governments, and it is used to build residences, commercial, and hospitality structures for the private sector.

The biggest challenges for any innovative construction material are certification and code approval. We spent nearly 5 years and a significant investment having our system tested in internationally recognized laboratories, executing demonstration projects, and navigating code approval processes in our target markets prior to our commercial launch in 2017.

This testing and certification is a prerequisite for bidding on government projects and to participating in public-private partnerships. We are proud to be the lowest cost, most energy efficient system with government approvals in Uruguay and count on approvals and requisites to build in Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and the Caribbean as well.

We are initially targeting countries where cement and brick are the predominant construction materials used and where we enjoy significant competitive advantages. Because South America fits the profile and because of my connections in the region, we focused our initial attention there.  

We began our commercial rollout in Uruguay in 2017 and plan to consolidate our position in that market this year. We plant to roll out in additional South American markets at a pace of one per year thereafter. Additionally, we are in negotiations with potential partners for North America and Africa, and have had significant interest in the Middle East as well as Asia.

The global housing deficit is estimated to be $10 trillion and the construction market toward this need could exceed $200 billion annually. Our Vantem System is very competitive in this market niche globally, as well as with other significant products like educational facilities that have a high need and demand but tight budgets and timetables.

 Our challenge is not market opportunity, but rather staying focused and managing our growth so that we meet market demands with the exacting quality and performance that we have become known for.

In the markets we currently target our true competition is traditional brick and cement, which accounts for over 95% of the construction industry in those countries. Alternative construction systems have had difficulty achieving code approvals, and the few that have achieved approvals face strong cultural barriers or are more expensive.

The strongest “alternative” system in our target markets perhaps is steel framing. Vantem enjoys a clear cost advantage and thermal efficiency advantage over that alternative.

We launched commercially in Uruguay in 2017 and have won 75% of all bids we have participated in since then, including a bid to build 23 schools, a university campus, and hundreds of new homes. Our pipeline of confirmed and potential projects exceeds $25 million and have received important and valuable testing approvals and code approvals that open other key markets for our continued rollout.

The current funding round with Netcapial of $500,000 will provide operating capital for the orders we have and are booking as well capital for installing an automated production line for Uruguay, which was recently purchased. This round, together with expected bank financing, will cover operating capital needs for orders to be produced in 2019.