SUNLU is to open a manufacturing centre in the USA.
In a Reddit post, the Chinese company wrote:
“A new manufacturing base is coming soon to the USA!
This is the next step in SUNLU’s global expansion.
SUNLU will establish a manufacturing plant in the United States to bring you faster delivery, stronger support, and to tighten connections worldwide.
Closer to you. Better for you.”
Also, on the company’s official blog, they hid this announcement in a post about their 13th anniversary:
“We are planning to establish a manufacturing base in the United States. From site selection to team building, every step is being carefully evaluated. Once completed, users in North America and other regions will benefit from shorter delivery times, stronger local support, and more responsive after-sales service. Wherever you are in the world, we want SUNLU to feel close and accessible.”
This is extremely interesting news for anyone operating a FFF 3D printer. That’s because SUNLU is one of the biggest manufacturers of high-quality 3D printer filament.
Let me explain why this is important: filament is mostly a commodity product, and it can be produced almost anywhere. This means that the big differentiating factor is shipping.
For example, if a buyer is in Wisconsin, and they have two possible sources, one in Iowa and one in Belgium, the Iowa option usually wins because shipping is far less costly.
Shipping a single spool long distances is the worst-case scenario. That’s why some filament producers will set up distribution centres in various regions: they lower the per-spool shipping cost by sending larger quantities all together.
But even so, they will still incur some shipping charges, even if optimized. The better scenario is to simply produce the filament locally, which reduces shipping costs to the minimum.
That’s what SUNLU is doing here.
The implication is that for North American buyers, filament costs for SUNLU products should go down, perhaps substantially. That in turn would put pressure on competitors to reduce their prices as well.
There’s another possible twist that may occur here: SUNLU is believed to be the “white label” manufacturer for other brands. It is possible that those brands may take advantage of a North American manufacturing plant to reduce costs on their own prices. In other words, we may see certain brands of filament suddenly appear with lower price points.
This is a good move for SUNLU and especially for North American 3D printer operators.
