Formnext 2021: A More Mature Exhibition Focused on Industrialization

Formnext 2021 closed its doors last Friday after 4 days of meetings and exchanges. This edition brought together 600 exhibitors from 35 different countries, spread over 3 halls of the Frankfurt Messe, along with about 17.8k visitors from 76 countries. It is time to take stock of the international additive manufacturing trade fair, which this year especially put a premium on “sustainability,” a concept which though traditionally connected to the environment also integrates social and economic issues. We also saw more and more impressive machines, some of them capable of combining additive and subtractive manufacturing solutions, but also post-processing solutions facilitating process automation. Finally, materials for additive manufacturing are developing with the aim to have a complete offer for all users. The objective is clear: additive manufacturing is becoming more industrialized and integrated into production processes.

This edition was inevitably special and many doubts still hovered a few days before the start of the show. With many asking will visitors even be there and what will the restrictions be? In the end, even with fewer exhibitors, Formnext 2021 was a great success. Though there may have been fewer visitors as compared to 2019, those who were there were more mature, that is to say many exhibitors considered that they were more interested in the actual implementation of AM. Most of them came with a project in mind, a specific application and specific needs. When talking to the exhibitors, all of them told us that they had never had so many appointments planned. This is very good news for the market, which is just beginning to truly structure itself in a more in-depth manner.

Janusz Berger, Head of Market Communication at Evonik, noted, “We can draw a very good conclusion from Formnext. We were expecting far fewer visitors, so we are very satisfied. However, it was clear that Asia is missing, both among visitors and exhibitors. So we were certainly missing a third of the fair’s visitors.”