Brexit and its effects for On Demand 3D Printing – why there’s no need to worry.

54% market growth in one year. Learn how to maintain and increase competitiveness with on demand 3D printing for metal casting in the UK.

It’s been more than a year now that the UK left the EU. The transition left many of our UK customers concerned about prices, lead times, custom duties and the ability to maintain competitiveness by ordering 3D printed parts from our On Demand Service Center in Germany. In this interview we sat down with Cameron Coyle, Sales Manager UK & Scandinavia, to tackle the most frequent asked questions and hurdles that might occur and how to overcome those.

VJET: ????Cameron, how did you experience Brexit and its effect on your business in the UK? What are the main challenges and workflows, customers have to pay attention to when ordering 3D printed parts that are produced in Germany and sent to the UK?

?CC: When Brexit finally came into effect on January 1st, 2021 the market was especially confronted with new custom regulations, many customers had to adapt to. One of the main changes occurred in regards to custom clearance for foreign goods.

Before Brexit, the workflow was pretty straight forward. Once a customer issued an order confirmation with a specific lead time (e.g. 5 working days), we printed the parts in our service center in Germany and send them on the way without any major bureaucratic necessities. This has now changed. Now, customers have to get customs clearing for imported goods, before the goods arrive on UK grounds. Otherwise, the goods will be held at the port and won’t be delivered to the customer in time.

?VJET: ????How does this custom clearance work and what effect does it have on lead times?

?CC: Our experience over the last year shows us, that the custom clearance effort adds about 1-2 days to the overall lead time.

The process now is, that once we receive an order confirmation, we start producing the goods in Germany. Let’s say, a customer makes an order on Monday with a 5-working day printing lead time. By Friday that week we will have printed the parts and we can begin packing them. Once packed we can start the export application and then issue an invoice for the customer which holds all the necessary info he needs to get customs clearance for the import, as this step needs to be done by the customer themselves.

It’s important to apply for custom clearance before the goods arrive at the port. Once we have the approval of custom clearance, we can deliver the goods.

So basically, the next week on Tuesday or Wednesday, the parts will arrive at the customer’s site. Out of a 5-day lead time order, it becomes an 8–9- working day lead time. With that in mind, customers can plan and place their orders without risking any standstills in production.

VJET:??????In regards to all these changes and challenges, how did your business develop over the past year?

?CC: Fortunately, we had an overall UK business growth of nearly 54% in terms of revenue. At 85%, sand molds and cores account for the largest share. The remaining 15% relate to PMMA models for investment casting.

VJET: ????Why did your business develop this much?

CC: One of the reasons for the growth, lies in the maturing awareness and adoption of 3DP printing technology. Many of our customers see the potential the technology holds in order to gain competitive advantages in terms of lead time and cost efficiency and start to incorporate 3D printing in their business model. At the same time, we see an increasing complexity of the part geometries. 3D printing enables engineers to create much more consolidated and more functional parts and more and more of those complex designs get into manufacturing for which 3D printing is the perfect solution. Added to that it enables them to produce metal castings at improved accuracy and less assembly effort. Looking at the numbers for on demand printed parts in 2021, 21% of the overall generated revenue through our on demand business was generated by UK customers with an upward trend.

VJET: ????What kind of customers do you primarily serve?

?CC: Our products are suitable for various casting applications. The main industries we supplied throughout the last two years came from the agricultural and automotive industry as well as the oil, gas and energy sector. Another rapidly growing segment is art casting, especially PMMA patterns for investment casting. More and more artists create their works digitally. This in return means, that art foundries start to work increasingly with additive manufacturing technologies. The main benefits for the art foundries lie in the cost effectiveness of the tool less production for patterns and the shortened lead time compared to when a tool needs to be created. Plus they can keep their traditional workflow working with our PMMA patterns.

?VJET: ????What kind of inquires do you receive? Especially in terms of quantities?

?CC: Here we definitely recognize another trend: While 3D printing is mainly recognized as a technology that is especially suitable for prototyping and smaller batch sizes, the technology has developed to a full production feasible technology. Today, with more complex part designs, we have many customers placing larger volume orders with up to 3,000 pieces and more. Our on demand service center in Germany holds the capacity of over 400 tons per month which enables us to cover such quantities. And what customers also value is the material diversity we can offer to meet their casting needs. We can offer a range of basic silica sands but also special sands such as cerabeads or chromite. ??This increasing trend can also be explained by the maturing acceptance of the technology and it’s growing cost effectiveness, also for larger quantities.

?VJET: ????How can you supply such large amounts of several thousands of parts from Germany to the UK?

?CC:?Over the years we’ve gained a lot of experience about the shipping and transportation regulations and were able to create some solutions to keep meeting the growing demand with intelligent transportation cost models.

We are still able to offer 1–2-day direct shipment and cover any damages or misproductions that might occur during transportation. We also gather various inquiries from the UK and if possible, send them with the same truck or train. This enables us to keep a consistent flow of deliveries to the UK. Currently up to 5-6 shipments a week leave our facility in Germany to come here to the UK. Depending on the demandwe can recommend various different shipping methods and agencies dealing with customs clearance for the import into the UK.

VJET: Thank you for your insights Cameron!

>> Sign up for our upcoming free online session for UK customers and interested parties with Cameron Coyle and our On Demand Printing Expert Johanna Tesfu, March 16th, 2022, 2 pm CET: