Additive technology, also known as 3D printing, could bring about a new industrial revolution for Europe’s plastics industry, says the European Plastics Distributors Association (EPDA, Salisbury / UK; www.epda.com). Already, the process – which opens up new markets, and allows producers to launch new products quicker, at lower costs and lesser risk – is seen to lift future demand for many plastics, including PA, ABS, PLA, HIPS and PET, among others.

The advantages of additive manufacturing include the ability to create three-dimensional models of a concept within a short amount of time, which in turn allows customers to quickly decide on a project’s suitability, eliminating the need for storage and significantly reducing transportation costs, EPDA said. According to a recent study published by Smithers Pira (Leatherhead / UK; www.smitherspira.com), the global 3D printing market is expected to expand by an average of nearly 24% per year over the next 10 years, reaching USD 49.1 bn by 2025 – see Plasteurope.com of 13.08.2015. Most recently, Germany's FIT (Lupburg; www.pro-fit.de) announced a EUR 20m investment in a new industrial-scale, serial production 3D printing facility at its headquarters (see Plasteurope.com of 26.11.2015).

EPDA member and distributor of semi-finished plastics Vink Kunststoffen (Didam / The Netherlands; www.vinkkunststoffen.nl) said the fact that 3D printing enables small production runs will speed up time to market and at the same time make the industry more efficient as producers will no longer need to keep large volumes of standardised products in stock. Instead, they can switch to a more flexible “made to order” approach.