Kingspan has announced the £52 million purchase of Century Homes, adding timber frame homes to its prefabricated building range. The move is likely to increase the housing side of the business from 30% to 40% of turnover. Kingspan already produce interior walls, floors and roofs for housing. Chief executive Gene Murtagh said: “We are interested in anything that improves the speed of building on site. There has been a call for someone of scale to come in and provide modern methods of construction. The English market has a very low level of MMC penetration, even by comparison to Scotland and Ireland, let alone North America.” (FT)