PanAlaska’s pilot manufacturing plant is a one-room workshop in Fox, just north of Fairbanks. It looks — and sounds — like some kind of futuristic laundromat, with huge machines hypnotically churning, then intermittently blasting out big puffs of steam.
Glenn Brady, the startup’s managing partner, pours a jug of tiny white granules into a hopper. They’re made of something called expandable polystyrene, which looks like the stuff you’d see if you sliced open a bean bag chair. Those little particles get treated and pressed into a mold, where they either become insulation or building panels.
Brady is the inventor of the Arctic Light Modular Structural System: insulated building panels that bolt together to make things like houses or commercial buildings. He’s a third-generation Alaskan who has worked in construction and engineering his entire life.
The company’s goal is in line with President Trump’s attempt to bring manufacturing back to America. But just as they were trying to ramp up production for the busy summer building season in Alaska, the Trump administration began freezing and cutting federal grants that were critical to their success.
Brady said he designed the product with rural Alaska in mind — the panels can endure extreme Arctic temperatures and are easy to assemble in places where there isn’t much of a labor pool for construction.
“Good ideas that get brought in from outside fail to consider those hard realities,” he said. “If it can't take getting rained on or frozen or dragged through the muck, or operated at the hands of people that may need to set down the process and go do subsistence harvesting and come back, it's not going to succeed.”
Roadblocks in the way of shoring up the supply chain
Brady’s company is one of only a few in Alaska working to produce construction material in-state. Most of the stuff used to build Alaska’s houses comes from somewhere else. The tyranny of distance often means it has a higher price tag.
But the same issues PanAlaska is trying to solve have also made it difficult for them to get off the ground, according to Jen Pickett, the company’s Sustainability Specialist.
“Up here, we're at the end of the supply chain,” she said. “So supplies are difficult to get. And so is labor. There's been a drain in Fairbanks for some time, in Alaska for some time. So, there's been lots of challenges to setting up your own business.”
Still, PanAlaska was looking forward to a big summer construction season. Brady said his startup was counting on up to $3 million for contracts to build about 30 houses in rural Alaska, which were partially funded by various federal agencies. But Brady said all of that came to a screeching halt due to recent pauses on government spending.
“It’s all at the worst possible time, in Alaska's construction season, when you're supposed to be getting things ready to go on barges and plan for the season,” he said. “So all these projects will literally miss the boat.”
Alaska’s affordable housing shortage contains a shortage of affordable construction materials
Brady was hoping to help move the needle on the housing shortage in
Alaska, before recent federal actions threw him off course. A 2023 Agnew Beck study says Alaska needs to build or renovate about 27,500 housing units over the next decade to meet current demand.
Chris Kolerok, Director of Public Policy for the Cook Inlet Housing Authority, said he thinks more local manufacturing could help the state meet that goal. But he said there are some big obstacles in the way — one of them is the state’s harsh climate.
According to an Association of Alaska Housing Authorities report, almost 15,000 homes in Alaska aren’t very energy inefficient. One marker of that inefficiency is draftiness, which burdens occupants with high energy costs.
Echoing Brady, he said not every supplier in the Lower 48 has the right stuff to adequately shelter people through the Alaskan winter.
“Insulation is an incredibly powerful tool for keeping our places viable,” Kolerok said. “In a place with $14,000 per-capita GDP and $14-a-gallon stove oil, good insulation keeping the home from heat loss is incredibly powerful.”
The pressure is on to bring manufacturing home
Kolerok added that one of the biggest barriers to building more houses is distance. Getting stuff up to Alaska to build houses is just hard — and expensive.
“We've got an additional 1,800 road miles, and/or 1,600 nautical miles to transport stuff,” Kolerok said. “And we can only break ground in May or June, right when the ground is thawed. The long and short of it is: our geographic location affects our ability to build houses, because it increases cost.”
All the while, the federal government is talking about bringing factories back to American shores.
But Kolerok said not all federal actions in that direction have helped the state’s housing crisis — for example, the Build America, Buy America Act enacted under Biden and unlikely to be disposed of under Trump, which mandates only American-made materials can be used to build something with federal money.
“Fantastic idea,” Kolerok said. “Laudable goal. Very important. It was decided to be implemented in 24 months… We do not fundamentally remake the American economy in 24 months. If you go into any home in the state of Alaska, the manufactured goods, like a thermostat — there is not a thermostat on the market that is built in the United States.”
And while the clock is ticking on the summer construction season for housing, PanAlaska is pivoting to defense contracting. They’re in talks with a few entities about how their insulation panels could be used for military purposes, in things like airplanes.
Still, Brady said he’s holding tight to the idea that his product will be used to keep Alaska’s future homes warm — and affordable.
“I have yet to find one person that does not characterize the current situation we're in as a crisis,” Brady said. “It's definitely going to need all hands on deck to help really solve this issue.”