AMPOWER is a management consultancy with a focus on additive manufacturing. The goal is to empower customers to successfully implement additive manufacturing technologies into their business to sustainably benefit from these new technologies.
The company advises investors, start-ups as well as suppliers and users of 3D printing technology in strategic decisions, due diligence investigations and provides access to market intelligence. On operational level, AMPOWER supports the introduction of additive manufacturing through targeted training programs, support in qualification of internal and external machine capacity and technology benchmark studies.
The company was founded in 2017 and is based in Hamburg, Germany, operating worldwide.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
AMPOWER: The activities are segmented into consultancy, report, studies and academy.
Consultancy projects mostly involve Additive Manufacturing machine and material supplier as well as investors. Projects often relate to go to market strategies, market intelligence and commercial due diligence.
The report is an annual market analysis, which gives insights into the current market volumes and outlooks, segmented into installed AM machines, material consumption and services (additive-manufacturing-report.com). The report further breaks down each region, technology and industry relevant for Additive Manufacturing.
In studies, AMPOWER analyzes a specific topic for a group of customers. This can be a new technology group such as sinter-based Additive Manufacturing, a new material group like Copper or a market analysis topic such as cost.
The academy consists of an online E-Learning platform (additive-manufacturing-training.com) and offline learning sessions offered to customers.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
AMPOWER: Additive Manufacturing is between new technologies and established ones. There are numerous startups with new manufacturing approaches related to Additive Manufacturing. They are often in a startup phase and raising substantial capital to develop machines, materials, software and services for this market. At the same time, there are several companies, who are active for more than 10 years and surpassed the startup phase. The deliver production ready machines to end use customers in Energy, Aerospace, Automotive and Medical to produce high value components in mainly metal and polymer materials.
The Additive Manufacturing industry had a prosperous year in 2022, with record revenue despite escalating tensions globally. The industry seems to have moved past the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and is projected to continuously grow at a double-digit rate in the coming years.
AM technology has become an enabler for products and services in various industries, such as Medical, Aviation, and Space, which heavily rely on its benefits. In particular, Space has emerged as a significant driver of the metal AM industry due to the need for large and highly complex components made of difficult-to-process materials. AM technology allows to produce components with unparalleled performance and efficiency, which is crucial as the number of launches is expected to rise significantly in the future. As a result, large investments in machine capacity will be required to meet the demand from this industry. This trend will be mirrored additional industries such as Defense and clean energy programs in the future.
Polymer AM continuing on its chosen path with an ever-increasing number of applications, users, suppliers, technologies and materials. Driving industries such as Healthcare, Industrial, and Consumer Goods are expected to contribute to steady growth in this field.
Experienced users of both metal and polymer AM are shifting their focus from expanding capacity through investments in new machines to optimizing their productions by increasing utilization and finding automation solutions to reduce manual tasks.
Moreover, there has been an increase in activity from developing regions such as South America and the Middle East, as more users are exploring the potential of AM technology. Overall, the AM industry has a positive outlook, with its continued success expected to benefit a wide range of industries in the years to come.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
AMPOWER: The market is steering towards industrialization. Some technologies have reached that level, others are still developing. Nearly every company, that processes high value polymer or metal components in every industry, has had touching points with Additive Manufacturing by now. Either in prototyping, tooling, spare parts or end parts.
To further reduce cost, a major trend of Additive Manufacturing is the reduction of cost per part. This is accomplished mainly by increasing speed and productivity of AM technologies. At the same time, prices of machines and materials are decreasing in some cases, enabling lower depreciation rates hence lower cost per part.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
AMPOWER: Innovations are driven mainly by startups in the AM industry. Innovations today in Additive Manufacturing mainly come from users, who produce new applications based on AM technologies. An example are 3D Printed shoes or Heat Exchangers. Major breakthroughs are regularly also reported by machine OEM. Companies like Seurat or Vulcanforms introduce new approaches on Additive Manufacturing of Metals while others like Cubicure or BCN 3D Are developing new polymer technologies that radically change the productivity rates of 3D Printing.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2023?
AMPOWER: Startups are facing difficulties raising investments currently which may lead to a reduction in technology innovations. At the same time, existing companies are focusing on increased productivity and utilization of existing platforms. However, the market has a projected CAGR of almost 18% and will continue with a double-digit growth over the next 5 years. Localizing supply chain efforts and investments into sustainable business models with further fuel growth.
