The management of a Russian company REC (that’s been developing and manufacturing 3D printing materials for nine years) thinks that the relevance of the additive manufacturing industry will only continue to grow as long as the market will become even more aware of the abilities of the tech.
The lack of public knowledge about these technologies is the main reason preventing additive manufacturing from scaling up and becoming more widespread. Demonstrations and pilot projects take more time that they otherwise would if more people were aware of what 3D printing brings to the table. According to calculations done in REC, yearly growth of the additive manufacturing market will not be lower than 20% in the next 3-5 years even considering the realities of the pandemic. The global additive manufacturing market is set to reach the capitalization of $30 billions by 2025 according to various calculations and researches.
Dmitry Miller, CEO of Rec, mentions that the additive manufacturing market has been steadily growing over the last past years. The main drivers of growth were small and middle-sized manufacturing businesses in the automotive, design and medical sectors. The Covid-19 pandemic significantly boosted the growth of the industry in 2020 since many drawbacks of traditional manufacturing became clear. It became apparent that the 3D printing technologies allows for more efficient optimization of expenses aimed towards components or complete parts production. One of the reasons is that integration of 3D printers allows the businesses to involve less workers for manufacturing processes in many industries, such as construction. And this is an important factor in the age of social distancing. The resulting growth of the global additive manufacturing market in 2020 was 25%. The analytics at Research and Markets and Wohlers Associates Inc. predict that we will see 18-25% of annual growth up into 2025.
It’s worth mentioning that the additive manufacturing market just started to shape up. Miller thinks that in the next few years we will see more intense and ubiquitous integration of 3D printing technologies not only into production and various economic sectors but also into the daily life of regular people.The reason would be the appearance of affordable 3D printers that have enough of features and potential despite the price. The new devices such as Anycubic Mega Zero 2.0, Creality Ender-3, Flashforge Creator Pro 2 and Phrozen Sonic Mega 8K show the trend into full democratization of 3D printing technologies. Lowering entry barriers for beginner 3D printing users will have a direct effect over the price of shares of the companies that produce additive solutions everywhere in the world.
Just in 2015 the global 3D printing market had a capitalization a bit over $5 billion, in the beginning of 2020 it was $11 billion, and there’s an expected market cap of $30 billion in 2025. One of the main driving factors of such rapid growth is quite obvious: the 3D printing technologies are improving and offer new possibilities. The industrial sector actively integrates the usage of rapid prototyping as well as serial additive manufacturing of composite and metal parts. The latter is done by the companies such as General Electric that managed to buy Concept Laser and Arcam startups and started integrating their equipment into manufacturing of aircraft engines and gas-turbine generators using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and Selective Laser Melting.
Designers and Engineers now have access to better yet more affordable professional 3D printers, such as the third generation of Ultimaker or PICASO X.
Jewelers and dentists aren’t ignored either: high-accuracy resin 3D printers used to cost ten of thousands dollars just a few years ago but now the devices with comparable specifications can be bought just for hundreds dollars. This make 3D printing even more attractive for making dental and jewelry models
Regarding investments, the best idea will still be buying the shares of leading companies of the segment (such as Stratasys, 3D Systems and Materialise), as well as starting a studio. The advantage of such business model compared to the startups in other industries is a relatively low entry: just two 3D printers will be enough to get the things going. Buying an industrial-level equipment for functional prototyping and small-batch production can be a good idea to compete even with middle-sized companies. For example, in the field of souvenir production. But it’s worth keeping an eye on how the demand fluctuates in one’s local area.
The covid-19 crisis made waves within the industry with several large-sized orders for making adapters for installing filters to the ventilators, as well as face screens, mask straps, protective boxes and other medical and personal protective equipment. Apart from large companies, the small startups and individual enthusiasts played a part in helping the doctors and nurses.
But many 3D printing companies had problems with the acceptance of their products since in just few months many countries of the world introduced the limitations or started requiring new certificates for such products. And it wasn’t always possible to adapt the results for new guidelines.
And this is the reason why investment into additive technologies is easier to be done with starting your own business inside more
“Overall, 3D printing technologies significantly simplify starting small business and managing production. The business will be more competitive while the customers will get more cost-effective options”, – concludes Dmitry Miller.
