VoxelMatters released their latest additive manufacturing state of the industry report on polymers, and it’s full of interesting items.
VoxelMatters has been producing detailed industry analysis and data for many years now, so it is always interesting to review their findings. This particular report details the state of polymer 3D printing as of 2025, along with their five-year forecast for the industry. To create this report, VoxelMatters investigated the activities of no less than 836 companies to produce the huge 277-page report.
The key finding is that the polymer market will grow 18.7% in 2025, to land at a huge US$9.25B in value. Of that, about half represents hardware sales, while the rest would be materials and services.
They also found that just under half of all the polymer revenue was generated by Chinese companies — not Asian, but Chinese specifically.
Each analysis company has a different strategy for breaking down revenue categories. VoxelMatters uses this approach:
- Consumer: Under US$1000
- Prosumer: Under US$5000
- Professional and more: Over US$5000
They found sales in the consumer category rose a staggering 43.9% in 2024. This is not surprising given the blockbuster sales of companies including Bambu Lab, Creality, and others. This category, according to VoxelMatters, is by far the fastest-growing segment of the industry.
They saw the Prosumer segment also grow significantly, but “only” 22.4%. This segment in particular has recently begun shipping very powerful machines that have effectively taken over the low-end professional market.
Their Professional and up category grew 11.8%, which at first glance would seem decent. However, that category is a mix of professional, midrange, and industrial equipment. The professional market has effectively collapsed, according to other research, so here VoxelMatters’ category is likely being held up by the higher-end systems, which have less competition.
Most notable in the report is their regional breakdown. This shows, for the first time, that in polymer 3D printing, the APAC region now exceeds both EMEA and North America. This seems to have been a surprise to VoxelMatters, as they reorganized how they do the counting:
“A year ago, we had North America at the front of the regional field, and we expected it to hold that lead through 2030. It did not hold it a year. Almost the entire hardware restatement falls in APAC, placing it ahead of both North America and EMEA on our restated 2024 base.”
An interesting finding was that powder sales grew 24.4%, while sales of the corresponding machines did not — and in fact, were flat. What’s happening here? It is likely that previously purchased powder equipment continues to be in use for longer periods, keeping them consuming powder. This means the powder business compounds and should grow faster than equipment sales.
Interestingly, the remaining materials (including filament) grew only 15.9%. This suggests that the lifecycle of filament equipment is shorter than that of powder equipment.
The report is quite impressive and contains significant details that would be of interest to anyone making decisions about polymer 3D printing in the near future.
Via VoxelMatters
