Major Housing Push: Onx Factory Coming to Jamaica With Capacity for Up to 10,000 Homes a Year
Jamaica Live News Desk– | Sept 11, 2026
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has announced a potentially significant development for Jamaica’s housing sector, revealing that technology-driven homebuilder Onx Homes plans to establish a manufacturing operation in Jamaica capable of producing thousands of homes annually.
Holness made the announcement after touring an Onx manufacturing facility on Wednesday, September 16, where he observed the company’s factory-based construction system.
According to the Prime Minister, the first phase of the planned Jamaican factory is expected to have the capacity to produce up to 5,000 homes per year, with the potential to eventually expand to 10,000 homes annually.
The proposed homes are expected to include one-, two- and three-bedroom units, with a particular focus on Jamaica’s affordable and lower-income housing market.
Homes manufactured in a factory
Unlike conventional construction, where most of a house is built directly on-site, Onx uses an industrialised construction process in which major components of a home are manufactured under controlled factory conditions before being transported to the development site for assembly.
Holness said he witnessed the process during his tour, describing how an entire home could be produced in the controlled factory environment and subsequently transported for assembly within days.
Onx describes its system as a combination of automation, advanced materials and precision-controlled manufacturing designed to accelerate housing construction. The company says its technology allows homes and major building systems to be manufactured off-site before being rapidly integrated at the construction site.
The company already operates manufacturing facilities in the United States and has developed thousands of homes in Florida and Texas. Its existing technology has also been designed with climate resilience in mind; Onx says some of its concrete wall systems used in Florida are engineered to withstand wind loads of up to 175 mph.
Holness: Jamaica needs housing at scale
For Holness, the proposed investment forms part of a broader effort to dramatically increase Jamaica’s housing supply.
“Jamaica has a significant housing gap, and I believe we have to increase the supply of homes at the scale and pace our people need,” the Prime Minister said.
He argued that Jamaica’s housing problem is substantially a question of inadequate supply and said modern construction technology could allow developers to build significantly faster.
“For the Jamaican worker hoping to own a home, for the mechanic, hairdresser, gardener, teacher and young family, this is the kind of housing supply we need to develop,” Holness said.
“Our housing challenge is largely a supply challenge. We have to build more, build faster and use modern methods to get homes into the hands of Jamaicans who need them.”
The announcement is consistent with the Government’s recent push for housing construction on a much larger scale. Earlier this year, Holness called on contractors operating in Jamaica to develop the capacity to undertake projects involving as many as 10,000 houses at a time, while encouraging greater adoption of technology to reduce construction time.
Just days ago, the Government also broke ground for the 700-unit Greater Bernard Lodge Housing Development in St Catherine, comprising 280 detached one-bedroom units and 420 two-bedroom units under the National Housing Trust’s Developers Programme.
Manufacturing the homes in Jamaica
One of the most consequential elements of the Onx announcement is that the homes would not simply be imported into Jamaica.
According to Holness, the manufacturing operation itself is coming to the island.
That could mean Jamaica becomes the production base for the homes, although further details — including the factory’s location, investment value, construction timeline, employment numbers, unit prices and the date production is expected to begin — have not yet been publicly detailed in the information reviewed by Jamaica Live.
Those details will be particularly important in determining how the proposed 5,000-to-10,000-unit annual manufacturing capacity translates into homes that lower- and middle-income Jamaicans can ultimately afford.
If the project proceeds at the scale outlined by the Prime Minister, however, it would introduce substantial new industrialised housing-production capacity into Jamaica at a time when the Government is seeking to accelerate the construction of affordable homes.
Holness said he is now looking forward to seeing Onx establish its operation in Jamaica.
Jamaica Live – Your trusted news source both locally and internationally.