Additive Manufacturing Market

Suppliers predict a Metal Additive Manufacturing market size growth by 25 %

In 2018, the global metal Additive Manufacturing market size is valued at EUR 1.51 billion including system, material and service sales. System suppliers have the largest share of the total Additive Manufacturing market size. This includes all established metal systems such as L-PBF, Wire Arc Deposition or Powder Laser Deposition as well as new technologies like Binder Jetting and Coldspray. This dominant position will continue to remain until 2023. Most material sales are driven by metal powders and wire feedstock. The service supplier share of the Additive Manufacturing market is defined by service buraus, who produce AM parts for users and OEM.

For the whole market, a CAGR of 25.0 % is expected by the supplier side. Service suppliers predict an annual growth rate above 25 % until 2023. Buyers, or users, however, are expecting a weaker yearly growth leading to an overall market size of EUR 3.97 billion in 2023. The difference in expectations are explained by the overestimation of sales revenue by the service suppliers, especially the L-PBF machine suppliers.

The aerospace, turbine and helicopter industry covered the largest share followed by the medical industry. The aerospace sector profited from multiple activities for new space applications such as rocket engines and therefore attracted large sums of venture capital especially in the US market.

At the early days of metal Additive Manufacturing, Germany was the leading market region with its first movers in LB-PBF technology CONCEPT LASER (now GE), EOS, REALIZER (now DMG MORI) and SLM SOLUTIONS. Hence, many pioneering users were located in Germany and Europe. By now, however, the market share is more evenly distributed with suppliers and buyers from all over the major industrial regions of EMEA, AMER and APAC.

Market by region

Strongest growth expected for AMER and APAC

In 2018 the largest market for Additive Manufacturing market suppliers is EMEA region. Within the regional revenue of EMEA and AMER a majority is attributed to system sales. APAC region, on the other hand, shows an even larger share of system sales revenue. In the APAC region users are in an earlier state of adopting AM technology, typically characterized by machine acquisition. In EMEA and AMER activities are driven by industrializaton and scaling of production.

The forecast shows AMER will exhibit high growth rates to multiply today’s market size. APAC will follow in growth. EMEA region will continue to grow at high rates, but below the worldwide average. However, EMEA will continue to remain the strongest region in terms of market size for the outlook period.

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Market by technology

LB-PBF is the dominating technology in the Additive Manufacturing market

LB-PBF is the dominating technology in the Additive Manufacturing market. Since new AM technologies will be increasingly pushing into the market, the share of PBF is expected to decrease in the future. Over the past 5 years this share was even higher. In the next 5 years, system footprint of Binder Jetting and DED technologies such as Wire Arc Deposition and Powder Laser Deposition are expected to increase.

In 2018, the number of Metal FDM systems increased dramatically. It should be noted, that the cost for Metal FDM systems is usually not so high and therfore sets a lower investment barrier. Furthermore, many system suppliers have a large number of resellers in their respective distribution channels, which may have been obliged to purchase demonstration systems in 2018. These systems are included in the total number of sold machines, although they may not have been installed at an industrial customer, yet.

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Additive Manufacturing market by industry

Aerospace sector leads in system sales in 2018

Various industries have successfully adopted metal AM. Medical and dental can be regarded as pioneering industry of the Additive Manufacturing market with first serial productions starting in the early 2000s. Other industries, especially aerospace caught up to medical and continue to play a strong role in metal Additive Manufacturing, especially in the US. The report clusters industry by categories of Aerospace including Turbines & Helicopters, Automotive, Trucks & Buses, Energy & Powerplants, Medical & Dental, Tooling & Molding, Mechanical Engineering, Oil & Gas and Others.

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Market by materials

Metal Additive Manufacturing material consumption grows with increasing degree of industrialization

The metal Additive Manufacturing material market is expected to almost triple in feedstock use from 2018 to 2023. Regardless of the high growth, the feedstock accounts for only a very small fraction of the worldwide metal material market. Most of the alloy consumption in AM is driven by high end applications in aviation and medical. Thus, high strength and high temperature materials such as titanium and nickel based alloys are taking large shares. Most of the Additive Manufacturing market size for materials is driven by powder feedstock followed by wire materials.

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Additive Manufacturing investments

Overview on global investment activities

In the early 2010s, the technology of Additive Manufacturing was picked up by media and became subsequently omnipresent. AM was hyped as the “holy grail” of production technologies and claims were made it is bound to replace traditional CNC machining. A run at publicly traded companies ensued that were involved with this fabrication method. Subsequently the stock prices of these companies rose extremely and peaked in the end of 2013, beginning of 2014. Since then stock prices of nearly all AM focused companies have been on a decline and only lately stabilizing at a much lower value.

Additive Manufacturing History

First commercialization of AM in the late 80s

First experimental set-ups and early machine concept developments in Additive Manufacturing go back to the 60s and 70s of the 20^th century. However, the first commercial systems for polymers have only been available since the late 80s. In 1999 FOCKELE & SCHWARZE introduced the first Selective Laser Melting system. Quickly CONCEPT LASER, EOS and in 2003 TRUMPF followed with their own systems using laser energy to melt metal alloys. All of the early adopters of the principle of LB-PBF are still existing as machine manufacturers today, although some have been re-branded or bought.

Industrialization

Most of the metal AM systems are not fully utilized

The average system utilization is an indicator of the degree of industrialization and the maturity of a technology. While high volume series productions such as in automotive can certainly achieve continuous run-time with minimized downtime for maintenance and repair, workshop environments usually run at lower utilization that comes with the flexibility of the production. Overall Additive Manufacturing is still mainly utilized for prototyping applications. Only few industries have adopted metal AM for a wide range of products and achieve near full-time production with the technology.

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Supply chain

Almost 120 metal Additive Manufacturing system supplier known

Over the past decade the worldwide number of metal Additive Manufacturing system suppliers has increased significantly and a large variety of Additive Manufacturing technologies has emerged. Today, more than 110 metal AM system suppliers are known worldwide. Most of them are located in the USA, China and Germany. With 23 companies the USA are representing the largest number of system suppliers. In China 16 Additive Manufacturing system suppliers are located, followed by 15 system suppliers in Germany.

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Courtesy of Premium Aerotec GmbH

Metal 3D Printing Application for Aviation

Applications

Number of industrial applications continue to grow across all industries

Early movers of successful Additive Manufacturing applications have in common, that they originate from high end and high value component manufacturing. Typical examples are the medical, aviation, turbine, space and oil & gas industry. Parallel, the machine industry became aware of the one-off part production potential of metal Additive Manufacturing, too. Especially the tooling industry and special machinery in high-end segments are promoting the development of metal Additive Manufacturing applications.