Additive manufacturing (AM) pioneer Stratasys announced via LinkedIn that the company has acquired Forward AM GmbH‘s “key assets and operations,” a move that entails the two brands’ joint launch of a standalone company, Mass Additive Manufacturing GmbH.The Stratasys acquisition comes about six months after Forward AM announced that it had filed for insolvency.Forward AM’s bankruptcy filing, in turn, occurred only several months after the company spun-out from BASF, the world’s largest chemical company.
According to an interview that BASF CEO Martin Back did with TCT Magazine in January of this year, the conditions leading to Forward AM’s insolvency were largely a result of difficulties involved in the spin-out from BASF.Above all, Forward AM’s multinational presence—in addition to Germany, the company also had a presence in the US and France—stalled the timeline for the spin-out.While the company was originally anticipating approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and France’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) authority “within 30 to 45 days”, the process ended up taking almost four months.
Forward AM received its approvals at the beginning of November 2024, mere weeks before the company was forced to proceed with bankruptcy filings.Image courtesy of Forward AM “Until we had [their approval],” Back told TCT, “we could move completely close the deal, we did not have one carved-out business.That was providing a problem in terms of fundraising, because when we carved out the business, we had a certain plan, and I wanted to continue and go for the next [investment] round.
This has been made much more difficult.“What we saw were a lot of delays, stops on projects and customers who went out of business.This hit us.
You have less revenue than you planned.You have no complete business because you’re waiting for CFIUS and FDI filings.And you have limited capability in reacting to the new economic reality.” Image courtesy of Stratasys and Forward AM Stratasys, meanwhile, has a long history of effectively bringing acquisitions into the fold.
That history includes the acquisition of another AM material unit owned by a major German chemical conglomerate: Stratasys acquired Covestro’s 3D printing business in 2022.As with all end-to-end AM companies, constant development of new material capabilities is a key component of Stratasys’ business strategy, evidenced most recently by the company’s roll-out of the ToughONE material for dental applications and general industrial tooling.In this context, Stratasys should immediately benefit from the broad array of flexible materials in Forward AM’s portfolio.
Given the background behind Forward AM’s insolvency filing, the most interesting angle to watch following the Stratasys acquisition may be how the new parent company benefits from Forward AM’s ability to operate internationally.While the company closed its US operations early on in the bankruptcy process, it also quickly reached an agreement with US-based distributor RP America to continue providing customer support closer to the point-of-need.But Stratasys’ strength in, and focus on, the US market means that Forward AM may now have the infrastructure required to put the US market back at the forefront of its plans.
Finally, aside from the spin-out delays, Forward AM may have also been the victim of the high cost of energy.As 3DPrint.com’s Joris Peels wrote in his article about the company’s decision to spin out from BASF, “In short, poor scenario planning by the group left their business essentially untenable.No one dared to ask the question…What if, for some reason, natural gas became much more expensive? This is a fair question to ask if you have one of the world’s largest production sites, engineered to only run on natural gas.” After bottoming out in early 2024, natural gas prices have skyrocketed since, hitting the European market especially hard.
This would provide even more incentive for Stratasys to make the US a geographical base-of-operations for Forward AM.While prices remain elevated in the American market as well, the feedstock is typically far cheaper in the US than it is in Europe.And unlike in Europe, security of supply shouldn’t be an issue, given the Trump administration’s intentions to stimulate new production in order to double down on the US’s status as the world’s biggest natural gas exporter.
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