Sintavia, the digital manufacturing company specializing in mission-critical parts for strategic sectors, announced a $25 million investment to increase its production capacity, the largest expansion to its operations since 2019. Sintavia has leased a 25,000 square foot facility near its current headquarters in Hollywood, Florida (in the Ft. Lauderdale area), while also purchasing a range of new metal additive manufacturing (AM) and other advanced manufacturing equipment.
Sintavia will purchase at least three more metal 3D printers, including its second SLM NXG XII 600 and its third AMCM M4K-4. Also, as the company announced last autumn, Sintavia will be the North American launch customer for AMCM’s M8K-K, claimed to be “the world’s largest industrially viable laser powder bed fusion [PBF] printer.” Sintavia also plans to purchase additional testing and post-processing equipment to round out the expansion.
Sintavia’s headquarters in Hollywood, Florida.
According to the company, the funding is key to enhance its ability to produce more “high-performance thermodynamic components”, especially heat exchangers for the aerospace sector. Aerospace and defense are particular areas of strength for Sintavia: a little over a year ago, the company announced a contract from Bechtel Plant Machinery Inc. to create a dedicated AM facility, also in the Ft. Lauderdale area, in support of the US Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program. Sintavia also received a strategic investment from Lockheed Martin in the summer of 2023.
In a press release about Sintavia’s $25 million investment, the company’s founder and CEO, Brian Neff, said, “Looking into the next few years, it is clear to us that we need to make the investments today that will support the demand from our customers tomorrow. As the world’s first truly all-digital aerospace component supplier, Sintavia is in a unique position to push the boundaries of what is possible in terms of designing and manufacturing next generation aerospace components along a single, fully digital thread. But to do that, you need first to have the right facilities, hardware, and software in place. That is what we are doing today in support of our customers and their critical programs.”
Sintavia’s expansion is only the latest evidence of a defense-driven metal AM boom on Florida’s “Space Coast”. In this context, Sintavia is perfectly poised to be a major beneficiary of the AM Forward Small Business Investment Company Fund (SBIC), announced in February.
Southeastern Florida is an excellent example of what the future of manufacturing will look like: lean and agile, designed with the most critical sectors in mind, and above all, digitalized. Going forward, the supply chains for defense and every other strategic sector will look more and more similar to one another. Concerning the future, the most interesting trends to follow will involve how, and the extent to which, the manufacturing principles for such sectors trickle into consumer goods markets. They don’t present the most immediate opportunity for growth, but on a long-term timeline, they may present the best one, even for companies like Sintavia.
Images courtesy of Sintavia