Lifestyle villages boost Fleetwood

The success of Perth company National Lifestyle Villages has played a notable part in the growth of Fleetwood Corporation’s manufactured accommodation business.

National has established five ‘villages’ with more than 1,400 park homes and is currently developing three more villages with a total of 1,000 homes.

Its villages are marketed to ‘over 45s’ who want to downsize from a suburban home but are too young to consider a traditional retirement village.

Fleetwood has a close relationship with National, which was established by John Wood, whose father was one of the founders of the Fleetwood business.

This has enabled Fleetwood to be National’s exclusive supplier of park homes, providing a large and predictable flow of orders.

Fleetwood also has a close relationship with Aspen Group, which bought Fleetwood’s parks division in 2004.

The listed Aspen Parks Property Fund currently owns 12 tourist parks and is seeking to acquire additional parks.

The latest development to be supplied by Fleetwood is the Wave Crest Village at Hopetoun, on Western Australia’s southern coast.

The $4 million development is backed by local contractor and former shire president Rick Besso and is designed to take advantage of mining projects in the area, most notably BHP Billiton’s Ravensthorpe nickel project.

Mr Besso plans to have up to 100 park homes at Wave Crest, providing accommodation for mining contractors and others spending time in the region.

BHP Billiton has already placed an order with Fleetwood for 50 park homes worth $7.5 million, which will be installed at Wave Crest by the end of the year. This order is on top of the 1,000 person construction camp that Fleetwood built at Ravensthorpe in 2005.