In July, when I visited Concept Laser, Frank Herzog, the company’s President, CEO and founder, told me they were set to grow by more than 40% this year and showed me the huge new facility built to meet booming demand. Now those financial data have been officially announced by Oliver Edelman, Concept Laser Head of Sales & Marketing as the company received the Best 50 Award from the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs.
During the first six months of 2014, 45 industrial 3D printers were sold, which represents 45% growth compared with the 31 systems sold during the comparable period last year. Sales have actually increased by an impressive 100%, as more large high-end systems are being sold, including the huge XLine 1000, which holds a record for the largest 3D printed metal component.
“The aerospace industry is a significant sector for us and is now increasingly relying on generative manufacturing strategies,” said Edelman. “The brackets we produce for Airbus serve as an example of how lightweight construction elements for aircraft can be produced in the future. ‘Additive instead of milling’ is now increasingly the slogan among production experts. Of course, the dynamic development of markets such as China and the USA generally contributes to further anchoring this positive development. We are significantly ahead of our performance projections.”
Concept Laser is actively working with many top companies in the aerospace sector as well as in the medical and dental fields. The latest growth was driven mostly by customers such as Honeywell (USA), NASA (USA), Lockheed Martin (USA), Premium Aerotec (Germany) and the German Aerospace Center (Germany); however Concept Laser’s customers also include the FineLine division of Proto Labs (USA) and Fr. Aussieker (Germany) in the service sector, FloMet LLC (USA) in the tool construction industry, and Stomus (Russia), Dentware AB (Sweden) and Dentes Fräszentrum (Germany) from the dental sector.
The Bavarian Best 50 Award is assigned to those companies that most contribute to the growth of the local and by extension the German economy. From this point of view – even at a time where the entire European economy, Germany included, is struggling – Concept Laser stood out with its job creation contribution, by establishing a new development center in early 2014 and the ongoing construction of a 3,500 square meters assembly facility, increasing capacity and driving workforce expansion. “We expect this trend to continue,” commented Frank Herzog. “We view the ‘Best 50’ award as motivation to further increase the speed of our innovations.”
