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Ä LV S B Y H U S
“Älvsbyhus represents honesty
and security for customers”
Älvsbyhus makes the dream of your own house on your own land possible, and at
a reasonable price. It’s a bit like H&M and IKEA, but for prefab houses. As a result,
Älvsbyhus is now Sweden’s biggest manufacturer of prefab houses for the twenty-
second year in a row. Sales increased by more than 50 per cent in 2021. Kent Johansson
is the third-generation CEO of Älvsbyhus after his father Donald Johansson and his
grandfather, founder Göran Johansson.
“We’re extremely proud to be able to deliver the highest
profitability in the industry while still maintaining prices the alternatives weren’t as good.”
at a lower level than our competitors. Also, not every
company offers a turnkey contract with the delivery of a turnkey house.
All this is possible thanks to the fact that we control much of our
production ourselves.”
Älvsbyhus prefabricates the parts for houses, has its own sawmill
and even manufactures kitchen fittings. Not even IKEA can make
kitchen fittings that are more cost-effective than its own production. In
combination with constant cost awareness, this makes for the biggest,
most profitable company in the industry.
FULL SPEED AHEAD AT THE FACTORIES
2021 was a really good year. Älvsbyhus is one of the companies that
saw an increase in sales in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The
trend of working from home has meant that more people have the
opportunity to move from an apartment in an urban area to their own
home in a rural area. The company’s three house factories in Älvsbyn,
Bjärnum and Kauhajoki in Finland have been working at full speed
since the summer of 2020.
Älvsbyhus sells products in Sweden, Norway and Finland. The
Swedish market is the biggest by some margin, selling 835 houses in
2021. This gives Älvsbyhus a market share of almost 13 per cent, making
it the industry leader – a position the company has held for many years.
The market in Norway remained stable with more than 180 houses
sold during the year, with profitability higher than in Sweden. The price
situation in Norway is higher than in Sweden because of different build-
ing standards, and also because of Norwegian purchasing power, which
is relatively strong. More than 90 houses were sold in Finland. Finnish
homebuyers are starting to return to Älvsbyhus after a few lean years.
More than 1,100 houses in total were sold by the Group in 2021. In
figures, this represents an increase of more than 50 per cent compared
with the previous year, which also ended strongly. This means that the in-
crease is based on what are already relatively strong comparative figures.
“We’ve crushed the budget for sales in Sweden by almost 60 per cent.
We’re running our factories as hard as we can without compromising
on quality. This success comes at a price: it has a slight impact on
profitability. The Swedish and Norwegian order intake has meant that
the factories in Sweden haven’t caught up fully. This is why our Finnish
factory had to produce a number of houses that were transported
across the Gulf of Bothnia to our customers in Northern Sweden. The
cost of transporting the houses has eaten up some of the profit, but
SELLING AT A FIXED PRICE A MATTER OF HONOUR
Another factor that’s placed pressure on profitability is the fact that
Älvsbyhus sells its houses at the price fixed when the order is placed,
but the customer only pays when the finished house is delivered.
Delivery times have jumped to upwards of eighteen months with this
year’s pressure on sales, which means there’s plenty of time for the
cost of materials and inputs to go up. So in other words, the house
costs more to produce than what was charged at the time of sale.
“Selling at a fixed price is a matter of honour for us, we won’t
compromise on that. Älvsbyhus represents honesty and security for
customers. And an extra house sold is always an extra house sold.
On the other hand there is economies of scale in production, which
means the higher the production, the greater the profitability. Moreover,
this success can be viewed as a way of marketing this well-established
brand. All in all, though, sales pressure means slightly lower profitability,
which is nevertheless still the highest in the sector.”
FULLY BOOKED FOR A YEAR
There’s nothing to indicate that growth will come to a halt in 2022.
The factories are working at full capacity the whole year. New sales,
for houses with delivery in 2023, are also looking very promising. The
biggest challenge faced by Kent Johansson is to increase the delivery
rate. The company is also producing houses with a different design
than just a few years ago as houses now have significantly better
energy ratings than they used to. Älvsbyhus used to produce more
houses per week than it does now, but new production records are
being set all the time with the company’s new, extremely energy-
efficient houses.
“We haven’t yet identified our capacity limit for the new houses. What
we do know is that our staff are working extremely hard to keep up the
pace, while we’re seeing lots of staff
off sick or taking time off to look after
children on account of the pandemic,
and all the precautionary measures that
entails. I’d like to thank all our staff for
their sterling efforts.”
CEO Kent Johansson
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