Our friends at VoxelMatters have something to say about the metal additive manufacturing market.
The research firm publishes highly detailed reports and analysis on various dimensions of the additive manufacturing industry. This past week, they released their latest report on the metal additive manufacturing space.
Their reports are incredibly comprehensive. This report, for example, involved the analysis of no less than 476 companies!
What does the report say? We can’t give away the contents, but VoxelMatters did provide some hints, and they are extremely interesting.
This past year has been pretty disastrous for the 3D print industry as a whole. Uncertainties caused inconsistent sales, and the near absence of VC investment funding severely hampered many companies in the space.
However, VoxelMatters has discovered that the metal AM market actually grew last year — by 25%. This is quite surprising given the doom and gloom seen overall.
VoxelMatters Co-founder Francesco Pulimeni explained their analysis:
“Our latest report at VoxelMatters shows that while some big names slowed down, the real story is one of resilience and expansion—especially from newer players and fast-moving SMEs.”
They report some 5,239 metal AM systems were sold in 2024 by 136 manufacturers. That’s a very significant number, especially when you consider all previous sales. There are an enormous number of metal 3D printers installed today.
They also report that hardware sales increased 28%, while material consumption increased 35%. Apparently, there was “major momentum” in India and China.
One company they specifically mentioned was Nikon SLM, which grew their revenue by 36% in 2024. That’s significant for a large player in the space.
However, the biggest growth seems to be in the smaller players that have more intriguing solutions. This jives with my anecdotal observations, where I see some of the larger players struggling — often due to investment complications — while smaller operations are more focused and even profitable. However, the smaller players have issues raising investment due to the entire technology space being effectively blacklisted by the investment community.
Of the various metal 3D print processes, VoxelMatters reports that WAAM (Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing) has seen the highest growth rate of the metal techniques at +80%.
Finally, they present a forecast for the metal AM industry, looking out ten years. Today the market, as they found, is approximately US$4.7B, but is forecasted to hit an enormous US$59.8B in 2034.
We’ll see if that happens, but given the now widespread adoption of metal 3D printing technologies for making production parts, this could very well happen.
Via VoxelMatters
