Fishers firm turns old shipping containers into attainable housing

What happens to shipping containers when they return to land after a trip across the ocean? Increasingly, they have become a place to live on both a short- and long-term basis.

World Cup fans in Qatar and people visiting Phoenix for the Super Bowl slept in them. And cities around the country are beginning to look at container units to address homelessness and increase housing supply.

Fishers-based Eko Solutions LLC is one company looking to expand its footprint in the container-housing industry, which is growing in Indiana. Homebuilders include Custom Container Builders in Indianapolis and Rock Creek Container in Markle.

Globally, the container-homes market is expected to grow from $59.3 billion in 2022 to $87.1 billion by 2029, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Eko Solutions works to turn shipping containers into permanent housing for people looking for an affordable home and into temporary housing for natural disaster survivors. Since its founding in 2020, Eko Solutions has deployed 59 container homes.

The company, based at 12115 Visionary Way, offers five models that range from 320 square feet with one bedroom and one bathroom for $60,000 to 1,280 square feet for a two-story model with three bedrooms and one bathroom that costs $165,000.

“Across the United States, we see the lack of housing in general as well as attainable housing for individuals to be able to get into,” Eko Solutions President Peter Rodriguez said.

Eko Solutions, a subsidiary of Fishers-based Land Betterment Corp., is licensed to place modular housing in Indiana, Alabama and Kentucky. It is looking to gain approval in Michigan and Ohio.

The company also has farming, commercial and recreational divisions that use retired shipping containers to produce vertical farms, laboratories, offices, bathrooms and park-model RVs, which are larger than traditional RVs.

Manufacturers like Eko Solutions are permitted to use two types of shipping containers: one-use containers that have crossed the ocean a single time, and wind and watertight containers that have taken seven to 10 trips across the sea.

Rodriguez said each state differs in which containers are allowed for residential and commercial uses. While Alabama allows containers that have been used multiple times, Indiana allows only one-use containers to be repurposed.

“The uses [for used shipping containers] are a lot more than they were 10 to 15 years ago,” Rodriguez said. “Primarily, 10 to 15 years ago, they were being used for storage and roadwork.”

Land Betterment is focused on restoring former coal mining sites, including the Landree Mine in Jasonville, about 30 miles south of Terre Haute, which is being redeveloped into a farm-to-bottle craft distillery.

Looking to expand

Currently, Eko Solutions has a single manufacturing facility with 15 employees in Decatur, Alabama (its Fishers headquarters has four employees). But a second is coming.

The company plans to begin producing container houses at the former RCA/Thomson television manufacturing plant in Marion in six to 10 months, Rodriguez told IBJ.

Land Betterment CEO Mark Jensen and Director Tom Sauve, representing American Resources Corp., presented a plan in December to the Marion Common Council to purchase the vacant plant. The minimum offering price for the property at 3611 S. Adams St. was $1.64 million, according to city documents.

Fishers-based American Resources Corp., a supplier of raw materials for the infrastructure and electrification market, is a separate company that is operated by the same team as Land Betterment.

Eko Solutions and ReElement Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of Land Betterment that recycles EV batteries and breaks them down to their rare-earth materials, would share space at the plant. Rodriguez said discussions continue with Marion officials.

The plant would employ about 300 people, with 50 of those Eko Solutions employees.

“In the area of Marion, specifically, it will bring in additional workforce,” Rodriguez said. “In terms of what it means for Eko Solutions and Land Betterment as a whole, adding additional manufacturing capabilities in another area allows us to be able to get further outreach across the U.S. for affordable housing and a little bit more for innovative housing, as well as all of our other solutions with recreational, disaster relief, crisis management.”

Rodriguez added that company leaders are beginning to have some basic conversations with Marion city officials about putting Eko Solutions houses in areas that are currently unused. Marion officials could not be reached for comment.

Eko Solutions is developing a 130-acre, 120-home project in Hazard, Kentucky, and an eight-acre, 23-home development in Pikeville, Kentucky. Both towns are in the rural, eastern part of the state.

And it hopes to put its largest development in Noblesville, along the White River at the former site of the Noblesville Landfill in the 1800 block of South Eighth Street.

Rodriguez said Eko Solutions is working on designs and specifications for The River, an 81-acre development with about 350 houses, restaurants and retail options. The project would be built in four stages over about four years.

Noblesville Mayor Chris Jensen told IBJ through a spokesperson that he had a conceptual discussion with Eko about the project a year ago but hasn’t talked with company officials since. The company has not submitted any official plans.

“That’ll be the biggest one that we’ve taken on ourselves, and then right now, we’re working with a good amount of different groups, putting in some different plans and quotations together for some larger jobs across the United States,” Rodriguez said.

Disaster relief

After an EF-4 tornado struck western Kentucky in December 2021, Eko Solutions was one of the first phone calls Brenda Weaver took that offered housing assistance for residents of the affected communities of Bowling Green and Dawson Springs.

Weaver, president of lending and housing for Lexington, Kentucky-based Community Ventures, said her not-for-profit previously connected with Eko Solutions through the company’s village project in Pikeville.

She said container houses provide the speed and convenience necessary following a disaster. The houses are delivered on a truck and are ready to connect to utilities and infrastructure. It is a faster process than people might find when looking for housing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It’s a great resource in the event of disaster,” Weaver said. “For people that are just trying to rebuild homes they own, a lot of times these units can go on the same lot where those people are trying to rebuild, and so [homeowners are] right there during the construction or the rehab period until they can get back in their own home. And then these units can be moved elsewhere and repurposed to do the same thing again.”

Eko Solutions eventually donated four container houses that can be used for two years while their occupants rebuild.

“We want to be the first people out there helping,” Rodriguez said.

Both Rodriguez and Weaver said educating residents and officials about container houses is a key to getting them placed in communities, with some being more welcoming than others.

“What we found after the tornado disaster was, communities issued waivers because they realized this was a good housing solution,” Weaver said. “And, so, they issued temporary waivers so these units could be deployed and help families get in them. But it does take some cooperation from the local municipalities to be able to put these units on the ground.”

Rodriguez said he expects Eko Solutions to be a leader in the modular housing industry within five years, alongside Marysville, Tennessee-based Clayton Homes and Martinsburg, West Virginia-based Impresa Modular. The company, he said, will focus on the Midwest and East Coast.

“It isn’t brand new,” he said, “but it’s definitely a newer market that people are getting used to.”•

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified the relationship of American Resources Corp. with Land Betterment Corp. They are separate companies operated by the same team of executives.