PyroGenesis, a Canadian listed company (PYR.V) with a market capitalisation of $25M had been until recently essentially a fabricator of plasma-based systems that produced unique titanium powders which are greatly sought after by the Additive Manufacturing industry. These powders are unique in that they are small, spherical, and uniform, allowing them to flow like water; a characteristic that is extremely important in industries such as 3D printing.
The company announces today that a potential customer, acting as an independent third party, has analyzed a sample of PyroGenesis’ titanium powders produced using the Company’s patented powder production technology and found that, after using laser diffraction, a generally accepted industry standard for such testing, over 90% of the powders analyzed are below 106μm and more importantly, over 50% are below 45μm.
“These are indeed unprecedented results,” said P. Peter Pascali, President and CEO of PyroGenesis. “We can think of no other technology that can provide such a particle size distribution. The Additive Manufacturing market is currently divided into two principal segments of customers: (i) those that require powders between 15μm and 45μm and (ii) those that require powders between 45μm and 106μm. This independent analysis reflects that the majority of our powder production is within these two sweet spots, and further validates our recent decision to re-enter the Additive Manufacturing market and spin-off these capabilities to its existing shareholders.”
In 2015, the Company announced that it made significant improvements to its existing technology, which improvements resulted in the Company filing for a provisional patent and more recently, resulted in the Company’s decision to re-enter the Additive Manufacturing industry and become a supplier of titanium powders.
PyroGenesis could address 30% of the 3D Printing metal powder market
The small, spherical, uniform titanium powders, such as those produced by PyroGenesis’ patented technology, can immediately address over 30% of the 3D Printing metal powder demand.
“This is extremely exciting for PyroGenesis,” said P. Peter Pascali, President and CEO of PyroGenesis, “as we are essentially producing “the ink” for 3D printers. PyroGenesis has, a number of years ago, already produced these small, spherical, uniform, titanium powders for the biomedical industry, particularly for bio-medical implants. We stopped producing powders as we could not sell all of the powder produced however with the advent of 3D printing, and the demand for titanium powders, such as ours, growing daily, the economics are far too compelling for us to ignore. We cannot get back into the business fast enough.”
“This is just the beginning,” said Pierre Carabin, Director of Engineering of PyroGenesis. “The fact that we, at PyroGenesis, have one of the largest concentrations of plasma expertise in the world, with over 250 years of combined experience, together with our relationships with major Universities performing cutting edge plasma research and development, gives us a clear advantage over our competitors when it comes to improving our existing capabilities. We have only skimmed the surface with respect to the number of improvements we plan on making over the course of the coming year, and our success to date proves the unique skills and inventiveness that exists within PyroGenesis’ technical team.”
