The requirement is roughly 100 hectares. The manufacturing building itself is 35,000 m²; the balance covers logistics and storage buildings, material flow, turning circles for heavy vehicles and land for captive solar generation. Rail is a design requirement: the site must be served by a siding with a direct route to the Port of Walvis Bay, because the modules are made for export as well as for the domestic and regional market. Candidate locations in the coastal corridor are under evaluation against that requirement, alongside power, water and industrial-land availability. No site is secured.

The plant connects at transmission level and is billed on a nominated maximum demand. Design work to date puts that peak on the order of 15 to 25 MW, a figure that will be confirmed through detailed engineering and in consultation with NamPower and the Electricity Control Board. The design provides for roof-mounted and ground-mounted generation on the site to offset part of the daytime load and reduce grid draw over time, using a solar resource among the highest in the world.

Walvis Bay is Namibia’s largest port and a regional trade gateway, served by road and rail corridors into South Africa, Angola, Botswana and Zambia. Namibia has the best road network on the African continent according to the World Economic Forum, and the national rail line is being extended and rehabilitated to improve the Walvis Bay connection to neighbouring countries. A NAD 40 billion expansion of the Walvis Bay and Lüderitz ports is planned. Namibia’s investment board describes the country as a gateway to the Sub-Saharan region and cites that logistics position as the reason a Namibian plant can serve African markets through export.

The concept design is complete: a 35,000 m² facility with the production lines, equipment specification and material flow already laid out. The base design is double-storey. Where the site allows the footprint, the Namibian plant is built single-storey, which is simpler to construct and cheaper per square metre. The financial model assumes a 54-week construction period followed by a 15-week equipment installation and commissioning period. Environmental and permitting studies begin once the site is confirmed.

The plant is expected to support around 350 permanent roles at full operation, running three shifts, with 2,000 to 3,000 jobs during the construction phase. The plant makes its own cells rather than importing finished cells to assemble, so the roles include cell process engineering, metrology, automation and maintenance alongside module assembly. The technology transfer covers training of the workforce through to full-capacity ramp-up. The plant also draws on a supplier and services value chain in logistics, maintenance, fabrication and glass and frame supply.