Walmart and Alquist to expand 3D-printed commercial real estate
Construction company Alquist 3D worked with Walmart last year to build a nearly 8,000-square-foot 3D-printed addition to its store in Athens, Tennessee.
alquist
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Walmart It partnered with construction company Alquist 3D last year to build a nearly 8,000-square-foot addition to its store in Athens, Tennessee, for online order picking and delivery services. It is the largest 3D-printed commercial building in the United States, and despite a bumpy start, it is an important proof of concept for the commercial viability of the technology.
Alquist, headquartered in Greeley, Colorado, announced it will print more than a dozen new Walmart buildings, as well as buildings for other commercial retailers; This will arguably be the largest-scale commercial real estate deployment of this technology, which has been used mostly in residential construction to date.
As part of this agreement, Sika, one of the world’s largest construction materials companies with a strong focus on sustainability, will supply materials to Alquist for all future 3D printed projects and licensees. This will streamline Alquist’s national pipeline, lower material and shipping costs, and accelerate the development of more sustainable mixes for large-scale 3D printed construction — including commercial projects launched with Walmart, according to Alquist.
Noah Callantine, Sika’s 3D concrete printing engineer and field service specialist, said: “This collaboration positions Sika at the forefront of next-generation construction, opening new markets and creating long-term growth opportunities.”
This is a clear turning point in CRE construction, where modernization is known to be quite slow. The new technology has begun to grow in the home construction market, but at a much slower pace in commercial construction due to the size of printers required to create larger buildings.
Designing and manufacturing larger-scale printers, as well as developing the code and software to run them, Alquist got his start in the residential industry. It is currently partnering with a large equipment rental dealer and a full-service general contractor to scale the technology commercially nationwide. According to Alquist, doing this helps reduce the high cost of materials as well as the workforce, which must be both trained and local.
“The way to lower prices is [for] The important thing is to gain volume, and as you gain volume, you attract the attention of suppliers. They see that this is important and the more they produce, the cheaper they can get their supply chain,” Alquist CEO Patrick Callahan said.
growing pains
Construction company Alquist 3D worked with Walmart last year to build a nearly 8,000-square-foot 3D-printed addition to its store in Athens, Tennessee.
alquist
Callahan’s background is in defense technology, not construction, and he has positioned Alquist as a technology company. He said he is following company founder Zach Mannheimer’s mission to find ways to build residential and commercial buildings and infrastructure faster, cheaper, better and greener.
He admitted that the first project in Athens took so long because they resolved challenges in both the management of materials and the application of technology to print their first commercial building.
“This was kind of a classic Silicon Valley failed forward business,” Callahan said. “We weren’t part of the design process. They changed the permits. … Our general contractor met with us about a week before we started, and no one had ever done that before.”
The second project, a 5,000-square-foot Walmart fulfillment center in Huntsville, Alabama, took just seven days to complete.
3D craftsmanship
Although the projects employ far fewer workers, they must be more highly trained than typical construction jobs. Alquist promotes robotics and green materials by partnering with trade schools for its curriculum. That’s more attractive for the construction labor market, which has declined significantly in recent years, Callahan said.
“You don’t necessarily have to throw rocks on the scaffolding, you’re using the robots in a safe and clean environment,” Callahan said. “We’ve seen a lot of things that used to be kind of pushed back from traditional builders are now moving towards them.”
Growing competition
“I think when it comes out into this world, it’s probably going to open a lot of people’s eyes by showing what it can do, validating the cost estimates we make to our customers,” said Jason Ballard, Icon’s co-founder and CEO. “We should also expect to see a lot of interest in alternative construction methods, data centers and other commercial things.”
But Ballard sees more headwinds than Callahan, especially when it comes to childbirth. He said data centers are already “absorbing a lot of the labor out of the market.” He added that 3D printing for commercial buildings will have similar pressures as residential to be built more cost-effectively and faster than traditional construction methods.
However, Ballard said that next year Icon will produce at least one of the new Titan printers every month and will significantly scale up construction. While these printers are not ready for high-rise buildings, they will be able to render most types of industrial commercial buildings.
“If we do what I expect we can do next year and show it on both the revenue side, the cost side, and the technology advancement side, I think we’ll grow over 300% next year, and we’ve already been pretty busy this year,” Ballard said. “I think the world will start to say that maybe there are real opportunities to do better beyond the pilot scale.”
