Polish firm Zortrax made big news last year when they received an order from tech giants Dell for 5,000 of their 3D printers.
That news pushed Zortrax, based in Olsztyn, into the headlines and the deal, which totaled close to $10 million, made the company instant players in the 3D printer manufacturing market. The good news for the company just kept rolling as Zortrax debuted on Kickstarter and, in a heartbeat, generated $180,000 in backing for the launch of their $1,900 3D printer.
Karolina Bołądź, Rafał Tomasiak and Tomasz Drosio of Zortrax.
Now the team at Zortrax, COO Karolina Bołądź , CEO Rafał Tomasiak and CFO Tomasz Drosio, say they’re considering another great leap forward.
“Currently, we are looking at various sources of financing and simultaneously working on turning the company into a stock offering company,” Tomasiak told ISBnews. “The Bourse is a natural step for such a company as ours, and also the optimal choice, because apart from capital, we can also gain new investors who will help Zortrax’s development.”
Tomasiak says that, at least at this point, his company has enough funds to finance further development through share issues and profits, but he adds that an IPO on the Polish stock exchange later this year is a real option.
A bond issue in the early months of 2014 raised nearly $2 million for product development in addition to the company’s other sources of revenue.
“This money allowed us to increase the scale of our operations, but also thanks to the extra funds, we will be able to take the business to the next level,” Tomasiak said.
Zortrax was created in 2009 by Tomasiak and Marcin Olchanowsk, and in the last few years the company has grown steadily.
The company’s M200 printer is a complete system which includes the 3D printer, software and various company-made filaments.
The M200 uses a two-part platform to allow easy part removal with a heated platform which has a range of temperatures from 20° C to 110° C, an automatic calibration system for bed leveling, a Single Extruder Support system (SES) which allows to print support structure for complex models without the need of dual extruder and a build volume of 200 x 200 x 185 mm (7.87 L x 7.87 W x 7.28 H in).
It is capable of layer resolutions from 25-50 microns and can print minimum wall thicknesses of 400 microns using 1.75 mm filament through a 0.4 mm nozzle.
Connectivity happens via an included SD card and the M200 supports .stl, .obj and .dxf file types within Mac OS X , Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 operating systems.
“We want the Zortrax M-200 to became a business product, thanks to which people can make money and realize their ideas,” says Bołądź. “We focus on the reliability of hardware, low cost of technical equipment utilization and providing good technical support. The key is also to be able to print from a variety of materials – this is extremely important for professional prototyping.”
Have you ever used a Zortrax printer or seen one in action? Let us know in the Zortrax Mulls IPO forum thread on 3DPB.com.