An expectation of 25% growth in shipments for industrial 3D printers

News from the 3D printing industry | 12 November 2021

CONTEXT, an England research firm, revealed in a market study, that shipments by units of industrial metal and polymer 3D printers continue to increase. 

Metal printer shipments are projected to see year-on-year unit-volume growth rates of over +49% with polymer machine shipments expected to grow by over +20%.”, Chris Connery, VP of Global Research at CONTEXT

According to the firm, the increase in unit shipments of metal & polymer industrial 3D printers in 2018 was due to new hardware from MarkForged, Carbon, HP or 3D Systems. A lot of these companies saw an increase in revenue in 2018. The development of lower-priced, multi-step metal 3D printers has provided new pricing categories. All manufacturers are now allowed to get into the growing metal 3D Printing market.

Moreover, GE Additive, EOS, 3D Systems, three of the top industrial metal 3D printer vendors, all increase their revenues year to year from 4% to even 20% for 3D Systems for machines shipped.

CONTEXT used data of 3D printers with prices between $20,000 to $100,000 and over for its conclusion. The analysis of CONTEXT also has shown the selling continuation of lower-priced, multi-step metal 3D printers.

A healthy range of economical, low-volume production 3D printers has conducted in expected growth in the industrial polymers market for 2019. New technologies including Carbon’s Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) process and HP’s Multi Jet Fusion have also resulted to grow the use of additive manufacturing in low-volume serial production.

The combination of these factors means that 2019 is expected to see the shipment of 25% more machines in the combined Industrial and Design segments than shipped globally in these same categories in 2018”, stated the CONTEXT report