Shortly after it was announced that Essentium would acquire Atlantic Coastal, Medical Plastics News caught up with Blake Teipel, Ph.D., CEO of Essentium to find out more about what it means for the company, and how he thinks it can bring changes to the industry.
After announcing your takeover of Atlantic Coastal, you said Essentium was transforming the future landscape of supply chains… how?
Essentium’s supply chain solution deploys regional, distributed production capabilities to enable supply chain transparency and flexible inventory management at a highly competitive TCO while reducing waste and supporting a limited carbon footprint through on-site printing.
This transaction will help us scale to meet these needs in a long-term, sustainable manner.
Essentium is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the needs of the additive manufacturing and supply chain sectors. With more than 150 proprietary patents to date and the ability to addresses full-scale production runs by producing parts that can match the strength of injection moulding at an extremely low total cost of ownership, Essentium is advancing sustainable solutions to additive manufacturing applications for industries including biomedical.
How will this “revolution” of supply chains affect the medical plastics and medical device sector?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the additive manufacturing industry proved it could step in to make quantities of supplies at scale to keep assembly lines moving. Early in the health crisis, when face masks and other personal protective equipment were in short supply, we quickly produced 26,000 mask frames [the equivalent of 4 million masks using disposable filters], helping to keep police, firefighters, and other frontline workers safer from the virus.
In 2022, many companies in the biomedical sector will realise that producing parts themselves without relying on global suppliers puts them in a stronger position to get their products to market.
Outdated cost disparities underpinning the optimisation for global trans-pacific supply chain structures stood up over the past twenty years, simply no longer support the macroeconomic disruptions and geopolitical uncertainties comprising the nature of the commercial battlespace in 2022 and beyond.
The bottom line is this: additive manufacturing is demonstrating its sterling relevance to traditional manufacturing. 3D printing is ready for prime time. The biomedical industry will save costs while building stronger businesses that can withstand even a once-in-a-century crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.
With an increasing focus on sustainability and net zero, how is Essentium meeting environmental goals?
Additive manufacturing has an incredible ESG profile. From a sustainability aspect, there is on average 70% lower waste and 70% lower energy consumed in producing a part that is 3D printed or additively manufactured versus the classic subtractive machining-based approach.
In addition to this inherent value, our technology limits the carbon footprint of supply chains by pushing inventories to the cloud, reducing the total size of production runs because you do not need to overproduce to anticipate end-of-life service parts.
Those service parts can be additively manufactured at the end of life, resulting in further environmental improvements, a greater sustainability profile for the technology, and cost savings for the users of the technology itself.
What future plans are you able to tell us about?
We recently announced the Essentium HSE 240 HT Dual Extruder 3D Printer designed for small and medium-sized factory spaces and university labs. We also introduced the Essentium HSE 280i HT 3D Printer, the first true independent dual extrusion system (IDEX) designed and developed for the demands of the factory floor.
Essentium’s new 3D printing platforms help manufacturers accelerate into the digital age by enabling AM applications that significantly improve productivity and growth.
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