Continuous Carbon Fiber 3D Printing Pioneer Anisoprint Moves Headquarters to China

Anisoprint has reappeared, far, far away.

The formerly-Russian and Luxembourg company has resurfaced in China, according to their most recent press release.

In a post on LinkedIn, Fabbaloo friend and Anisoprint CEO Fedor Antonov said:

“I’ve been silent here for a while. The reason is – we’re writing a new page in Anisoprint’s history. So here is an update:

We had a challenging year in 2022, closing our Moscow R&D office and relocating the entire team to Luxembourg. This year we moved again. We have fundraised successfully in China and relocated our headquarters to the beautiful city of Suzhou.
As of today, we have re-established the production in China, grew our team back, and keep growing.”

This is quite a surprise. The company is one of a very few that produces a continuous carbon fiber 3D printer, using their patented “Continuous Fiber Coextrusion” process. This is quite distinct from “normal” carbon fiber 3D printing, which is simply mixing in chopped carbon fiber into the material. That makes parts somewhat stronger, but nothing like using long strands of near-indestructible carbon fiber as is done with Anisoprint’s systems.

The company has relocated its headquarters and manufacturing to Suzhou, China, a city of 13M just west of Shanghai.

One can understand why Anisoprint exited Russia, as they still had some research and development taking place there even though their headquarters for several years has been in Luxembourg. But why move from Luxembourg?

I’m interested to catch up with Fedor at next week’s Formnext event to find out more, but in the meantime I have some speculation.

The company received its first round of investment, and it turns out it was sourced from a “top-tier Chinese venture capital firm”. It isn’t stated, but it’s possible that one part of the deal could have been the relocation. They’ve also had a Shanghai office for a few years that’s posted very substantial sales.

Nevertheless, Anisoprint now has shiny new headquarters, as you can see in this image. In the Shanghai area they will certainly have proximity to countless other tech firms and potential customers, far more than they would have in Luxembourg.

Anisoprint is no stranger to China, having set up a base in Shanghai a few years ago. It’s very likely that step ultimately led towards the big relocation that just took place. Further, they appointed their local China sales leader, Ryan Liu, as EVP of Sales for the entire company. Liu’s demonstrated growth strategy for China might now be applied worldwide.

Big things are definitely afoot at Anisoprint.

Via Anisoprint