Behind closed doors, Saltair Modular brings entire homes to life with the precision and efficiency that only a controlled environment can offer.
It is here that homes are built piece by piece, with all of the attention to detail and quality control that you would expect from a top-tier construction company. The difference? These homes are delivered to their sites fully complete – a testament to the growing appeal and practicality of modular design.
When you think of modular, you might picture a formation that is simple or utilitarian, but these homes are anything but. They are sleek. They are modern. And they are designed with the same care and creativity as any custom build – just built a little differently.
That is because the Saltair Modular team, which was founded in 2013, has spent the past five years honing its craft, pushing further into the ‘mum and dad market’ with a unique vision: making modular homes that don’t actually look modular.
“Initially people were nervous about modular and they wanted it to look like a normal home. But more recently, people actually like the modular aspects,” Steve Bridger, Saltair’s managing director, says.
The rising trend of these prefabricated homes in the residential market has coincided with Saltair Modular’s significant push into the commercial and government sectors, taking on projects under the Queensland government’s Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) program.
A true Sunshine Coast success story, Saltair Modular has since quadrupled its footprint locally – now operating two production facilities in Coolum, which are equipped to produce up to 900 modules per year. The recent establishment of an additional facility at Crestmead, on the southside of Brisbane, further boosts Saltair’s overall production capacity to 1800 modules per year and allows the company to serve an even broader and more diverse range of clients.
“As part of our ongoing expansion, we’re actively looking to service not just the home residential industry but government, social housing, government employee housing, Lend Lease communities, developers, townhouses, the tourism and hospitality market, education, health and defence,” Steve tells salt.
Saltair Modular’s innovative approach has not gone unnoticed. The company is highly decorated for its designs, particularly in the residential sector. The company’s most recent accolade at the 2024 Master Builders Sunshine Coast Housing and Construction Awards highlights its growing influence in the commercial space. Saltair Modular won the Commercial and Industrial Building up to $5 million category for its Sunshine Coast Airport Car Rental Services project, which involved transporting two oversized 96m² modules from their Coolum production facility to the Sunshine Coast Airport under police escort during a curfew shift.
“We still love residential, we’re very good at it. We’re always getting better,” Steve says. “But when we think modular, it’s not just housing. It’s whatever can be done building-wise.”
And it is this versatility that has made Saltair Modular a sought-after name not just here on the Sunshine Coast but right across Queensland.
“We’ve been going all over the state, shipping things up to Airlie Beach and out west as far as Thargomindah, which is out past Longreach,” Steve says.
“And we were the ones who quickly installed half a dozen duplexes or so for the Tara bushfires. We were doing a QBuild job at the time and we had the modules there.
“It’s just another advantage of doing modular because the Queensland government had ordered them and there was a desperate need, so we redirected that to Tara for police housing.”
The flexibility of Saltair Modular’s approach is further demonstrated in its design offerings. With 34 standard designs that can be modified to suit individual needs, along with the option for fully custom builds, the possibilities are endless.
“At the end of the day, our clients want certainty. They want certainty over their costs, they want certainty over their timeframe and they want certainty in the delivery of the quality of their product,” Steve says.
“We take people through a front-end design process with our in-house design team. And through that process we do all the showrooms and selections and things like that. So before a client signs on the dotted line, we’ve addressed everything that you can about their build.”
And given that it’s a factory process, Steve says the production of each house happens a lot quicker than a traditional build.
“The house itself is pretty much 99 per cent complete. We’re putting tiles on all the walls, we’re sticking mirrors on the walls, et cetera, all the cabinetry is in. The only thing that you have to do on site is land that building and then connect it all,” he says.
“There are many advantages to modular construction. You get factory quality and a lot more supervision and inspection of the work. And you also get the ability to do work in parallel. “You can do your footings and things like that in parallel with doing the modules, so you get the speed – that’s a big time saver. And from a design point of view, you can take just about any design and modularise it.”
As the Saltair Modular team continues to expand its reach, its innovative approach to building is proving that modular construction isn’t just an alternative – it’s a solution.
With an unwavering focus on quality, efficiency and design, they’re helping homeowners, developers and even governments reimagine what’s possible… one module at a time.