ALTANA AG to Sell Stake in dp polar to 3D Systems

ALTANA announced the sale of its stake in the 3D printing systems manufacturer dp polar, to 3D Systems, a leading additive manufacturing solutions partner, that has brought the innovation of 3D printing to the manufacturing industry more than thirty years ago. The parties have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

As a specialty chemicals company with a core competence in innovative printing material development, ALTANA will continue to further advance and expand its manufacturer-independent Cubic Ink® 3D printing product families for material jetting.

ALTANA had invested in dp polar in 2017. During the partnership, the start-up, based in Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen near Karlsruhe, Germany, had worked closely together with ALTANA to develop the world’s first 3D printing systems with a continuously rotating print platform, the AMpolar machine generation for material jetting.

“We were happy to support dp polar both as an investor and as a development partner over the last five years and thank dp polar and its teams for the successful cooperation. The close teamwork between mechanical engineering, machine development, and material development made it possible to create new opportunities for serial production in additive manufacturing and develop individual solutions for our customers and their specific requirements”, says Dr. Petra Severit, CTO of ALTANA AG.

“Now it’s time for dp polar to move ahead to a new growth stage with an industry partner such as 3D Systems specialized in 3d printing hardware, while our customers will continue to benefit from our great solution expertise in the development of innovative resilient high-performance materials as well as our experience in the formulation of high-performance inkjet inks.”

The Cubic Ink printing material families by ALTANA AG, with two new resin-based product groups presented this spring, are designed for industrial production, offering high heat resistance, toughness, and flexibility, among other things, in the inkjet material segment. In particular, the resin portfolio for manufacturer-independent applications serves any resin-based 3D printing technology.

The product profile is intended for the end application – special focus is placed on aging and chemical resistance in particular. The low viscosity of the resins, among other things, permits reliable processing in time- and cost-efficient printing processes for high-performance products. Printing properties and processes can be individually adapted depending on the printer and customer requirements.

Cubic Ink is part of a range of applications of ALTANA AG’s solutions for industrial 3D printing. For example, ALTANA extended its portfolio in 3D printing materials by acquiring the business of TLS Technik GmbH & Co Spezialpulver KG and the British company Aluminium Materials Technologies Ltd. (AMT).