By Nishant Arora
Barcelona, May 24 (IANS): Global printing and PC major HP is seriously looking at partnering with the Indian government to push its 3D printing solutions in the domestic manufacturing and prototyping market that has the potential to grow exponentially in the coming years.
HP continues to reinvent the $12 trillion global manufacturing market, including the $6 trillion Asia-Pacific and Japan manufacturing segment, where India is a strategic hub for this significant shift.
"We are looking to collaborate with the Indian government to push our 3D printing offerings to various stakeholders, especially manufacturers in automotive, aerospace and health care as well as designers involved with prototyping and materials," Ramon Pastor, Vice President and General Manager of Multi Jet Fusion, HP, told IANS.
"We need to collaborate with industry partners and the government to showcase the Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology and create awareness in the country that has immense potential," added Pastor during the "HP Innovation Summit" at the company's 3D printing hub here.
In a bid to take industrial manufacturing in India to a new level, HP in January brought its acclaimed Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) 3D Printers to the country.
Starting from Rs 2.5 crore, the HP printing solution includes pre- and post-processing unit, the 3D printer and initial consumables.
According to Sumeer Chandra, Managing Director, HP Inc India, while verticals like automotive, defence and manufacturing in general are the key focus for the company, healthcare is a promising area for HP Inc in the long term in India.
"The Indian market has great potential and a lot of demand will come from the core manufacturing processes for domestic consumption. After aerospace and automotive, I see great potential in the healthcare sector there," Pastor emphasised.
According to the industry reports, the global 3D printing market is expected to be worth over $32 billion by 2023.
Manufacturing in India today constitutes 18 per cent of the GDP and the government is trying to push that towards 25 per cent.
HP's industrial Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) 3D Printing solution is a production-ready commercial 3D printing system that delivers superior-quality physical parts up to 10 times faster and at half the cost of current 3D printing systems.
Today, India has three industrial-scale Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) 3D printers.
As certified HP 3D printing reseller partners in India, Mumbai-based Imaginarium, Noida-based Adroitec and Chennai-based Redington have deployed the MJF printing solutions, serving their customers across industries.
In 2016, HP Inc unveiled the world's first production-ready commercial 3D printing system to bring disruptive manufacturing solutions to markets.
Currently, HP 3D printing solutions are available in Asia-Pacific, EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and the Americas, with more than 65 channel partners engaging with customers and more than 25 experience centres showing Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) in action.
When it comes to India, Pastor said, the demand and the capacity or supply for 3D printing solutions is almost running parallel in the country.
"The India situation is much more similar to some of the European countries where the demand for the 3D printing solutions and the offerings are running parallel and some states are extending great support to us on this," Pastor told IANS.