India’s Primaeam Solutions Opens 3D Printing Service with Materialise

Primaeam Solutions Pvt Ltd, an additive manufacturing (AM) services has announced the opening of a new, 10,000 sq. ft. service bureau located in the firm’s home city of Chennai, the largest city and capital of India’s southeastern Tamil Nadu state. The new space goes by the somewhat cumbersome name of the “Additive Manufacturing Customer Experience Centre, Innovation & Incubation Centre for Healthcare”. Built in partnership with the prominent Belgian AM firm Materialise, it is the first facility of its kind in India.

Primaeam’s new hub represents an investment of Rs. 20 Crore (about US$2.7 million), and will feature Materialise’s signature Mimics Innovation Suite software. The Mimics Innovation Suite, perhaps the premier biomedical 3D printing software on the market, is used by hospitals, medical device companies, and AM startups. In its latest updates, the software has been expanded to match even more closely the precise applications of its use, as informed by customer experiences. In an interview last October with 3DPrint’s Sarah Saunders, Materialise Vice President and General Manager for North America Bryan Crutchfield succinctly said the goal of the recent expansions to Mimics’ toolbox has been “breaking it apart and arranging it very specifically into modules.”

As for Primaeam, this is not the only partnership with a Western firm recently announced by the young company (established just in 2019). Primaeam has also partnered with SLM Solutions, German manufacturer of metal AM printers. In a press statement printed in the Times of India, managing director of SLM Solutions, Srinivas Shastry, said, “We are excited to have Primaeam as our customer with our trailblazing SLM 280 twin 700w machine which would empower Primaeam in industrializing and growing their 3D metal printing offerings to both Indian and global markets.”

Although not touted as often as the AM industries in the United States, China, or countries in the European Union, the AM landscape in India is quietly burgeoning, and has involved some fairly prominent companies of late, including the entry into the metal AM market by BFW India last fall.

In a post I wrote about that particular development, I pointed out that, “One of the most underreported aspects of the Trump administration…involved the finalization of a [U.S.] defense pact with India”, and suggested how India’s economic trajectory over at least the next decade will largely be shaped by its role in counterbalancing Chinese economic power on America’s behalf.

The fact that BFW’s headquarters, like Primaeam’s, is also located near India’s southeastern coast, could imply that investment in the region is being specifically coordinated to bypass as much as possible China’s Belt and Road Initiative, more or less immediately to India’s north. Regardless, an investment of almost US$3 million in a single service bureau facility indicates that Primaeam envisions lucrative days on the horizon.

Images courtesy of 3Printr and Primaeam.