Article from the Australian Financial Review – 21st June 2026
Insurance giant IAG has taken a stake in Spacecube, a modular building firm that can rapidly deploy temporary accommodation on-site after disasters, as the Melbourne-based firm prepares to ramp up its rollout of pre-fab products in global markets.
For IAG, the attraction of Spacecube is more immediate and closer to home. Its motivation is to ensure the modular building system is available as part of the insurer’s disaster response across rural and regional Australia, said Jarrod Hill, chief executive of IAG brands CGU and WFI Insurance.
Spacecube modular homes are flat-packed and delivered by truck.
The flat-pack products enable customers whose homes have been destroyed or damaged by floods or bushfires to remain on their land, allowing them to maintain operations on their farms and small businesses, Hill said.
“The big opportunity we saw was post-major event, particularly in rural communities; the ability for us to provide temporary accommodation can be challenging,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
“One of the big challenges we’ve had is that they (customers) lose their house in the bushfire, and we’re there, ready to reinstate the house, but that can be a 12- to 24-month process. So, what do they do in that period?
“They’ve still got a farm to run, they’ve still got cattle to tend, or crops to look after, and we’ve got to relocate them. In one [recent] example, the closest we could relocate someone for rental accommodation was about an hour-and-a-half drive away.
“That’s where Spacecube was really exciting for us: the ability to get accommodation on premises relatively quickly and the flexibility it provided. Whether we had power and utilities or not, we can still stand up a self-contained unit with Spacecube.”
Under a pilot program, IAG deployed some Spacecube units in regional Victoria after the bushfires in January this year, with the pre-fab accommodation enabling several families to remain on their properties while rebuilding. It plans to include the Spacecube option through its NRMA Insurance, CGU, WFI Insurance and RACV channels.
Through Firemark Ventures, its venture capital arm, IAG has taken a $3 million stake in Spacecube, joining local investors on the register, such as Taronga Ventures, as well as New Zealand investment houses, Angel Investors Marlborough and Mainland Thinkers.
IAG’s investment comes amid increasing investmentin the modular building sector in a bid to speed up the desperately needed new homes supply.
Over the weekend, the NSW Minns government said it is looking to establish an east coast pre-fab housing manufacturing hub by teaming up with a private player.
Separately, modular housing provider Modular Construction Masters is in the middle of a capital raising to establish a housing factory in Vietnam, which it hopes will manufacture and ship 1500 pre-fab apartments to Australia each year within four years.
Founded in 2012, Spacecube’s pre-fab structures are already being used in various settings, from product stands at events and for brand activations to commercial sites and temporary healthcare facilities and disaster housing.
Some of its more prominent projects include multi-storey entertainment venues at the famed Birdcage enclosure at the Melbourne Cup and a medical facility to treat COVID-19 patients at Monash Health in Melbourne that was set up in just three weeks during the pandemic.
Spacecube’s structures are also being used at Grand Prix races around the world, from Melbourne to Monza in Italy, Zandvoort in the Netherlands and Silverstone in the UK.
“Right now, I’ve got a team in the USA delivering half a dozen projects for the FIFA World Cup,” said Spacecube chief executive Mark Davies.
The next big opportunity for Spacecube, though, both locally and globally, lies in disaster relief and emergency housing, he said.
“How do we expand that now with what we work with IAG on to make this a global solution?
“We’re actually taking on the challenge of disasters – whose frequency is increasing – and providing a world-class solution here in Australia.
“This is an issue happening all around the world. This is not just an Australian problem. We have a global housing affordability problem. We have a global problem of disaster frequency, and we also have a global problem of the impact of disasters.”
Nick Lenaghan edits the property section, which covers all aspects, from residential real estate and housing and construction to commercial property – office, retail, industrial – and major ASX-listed developers and real estate investment trusts.
