Metal Additive Manufacturing market valued at EUR 2.03 billion in 2020

Metal Additive Manufacturing market 2021

Metal Additive Manufacturing suppliers predict a market growth of 29.2%

In 2020, the global metal Additive Manufacturing market is valued at EUR 2.03 billion including system, material and part manufacturing supplier sales. Due to the impact of COVID-19, the suppliers’ goal sales growth from the previous year could not be met in 2020. However, the suppliers have a positive outlook and expect a CAGR of 29.2 % until 2025. Meaning the market will bounce back, nearly matching its strong growth of over 30 % from before the pandemic.
The revenues of the system suppliers are expected to grow with a slight decrease from last year’s growth expectations. Especially the established Powder Bed Fusion system suppliers have provided a more conservative outlook compared to the previous years. And yet, the growth expectation is still well in the double-digit range.
The material and part manufacturing suppliers, on the other side, increased their CAGR predictions. After a challenging year, expectations for 2021 to make up for lost business are high. It is generally believed that many projects and budgets were only temporarily postponed and will drive revenue in 2021. Furthermore, the continuous industrialization of the metal Additive Manufacturing technology will drive the use and hence utilization of the installed machine capacity.
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 ADDITIVE), 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.

Metal market by region

APAC and AMER catch up

Overall, EMEA continues to be the strongest market for metal AM suppliers with in 2020. However, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the AM market were felt strongest in this region as sales revenues decrease in the double-digits compared to 2019. The system sales had a also major decline and dropped below the result from the previous year. For 2025, the overall outlook is very positive and the suppliers of the EMEA region predict an even higher growth thatn in the year before.
The second largest region in terms of sales revenue is AMER 2020. Although the AMER region revenue grew overall compared to the previous year, revenue from system sales dropped by also in the double-digit range. System suppliers reported a strong activity from the space industry in this region, that reduced the overall decline.
The region of APAC had a strong a year-on-year increase. In comparison to AMER and EMEA, the region of APAC experienced a fast recuperation from the COVID-19 pandemic and, hence, shows only a minor impact. However, also in the APAC region the system sales were slightly lower to arrive at revenue then in the year before.

Market by technology

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

Powder Bed Fusion continues to lead in terms of installed and annually sold machine units. Having the highest maturity index for metal Additive Manufacturing technology, PBF is used as production technology throughout all verticals. However, already in 2019 the number of sold units stagnated and was marked by no growth in sales. Despite this, many PBF system suppliers had an optimistic outlook and strong growth expectations as many industrial users are on track to prepare a larger scale use of AM technology. In 2020, these expectations could not be met as the pandemic led to delays or complete stops of sales projects. The struggles of many users and important industries for AM technology were followed by budget cuts and refocusing of efforts. Furthermore, the general restrictions in travel and transport did not only hinder the machine sales, but also the installation and service activities.

Additive Manufacturing market by industry

Space soars in 2020

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.

Metal market by materials

Metal Additive Manufacturing material consumption grows with increasing degree of industrialization

The metal Additive Manufacturing material market is expected to almost quadruple from 2020 to 2025. On one hand material consumption is driven by high end applications in aviation and medical. On the other hand, BJT will drive steel applications in automotive and general engineering.

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.

Database

More than 140 metal Additive Manufacturing system suppliers 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 140 metal AM system suppliers are known worldwide. Most of them are located in the USA, China and Germany. The USA are representing the largest number of system suppliers. China and Germany follow.

Go to databases

Courtesy of Premium Aerotec GmbH

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.