Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will he make an assessment of the potential contribution of 3D printing to UK GDP by 2020.

The industry backed Additive Manufacturing strategy identifies that the UK’s High Value Manufacturing Sector can capture over £3.5bn per year (Gross Value Added) for the UK of the rapidly growing global market for additive manufacturing products (3D printing) and services by 2025, supporting 60,000 jobs in the knowledge economy and generating new, highly skilled employment opportunities. The industry led Made Smarter Review also identifies the contribution of digitally enabled technologies to manufacturing-including additive manufacturing- to the UK economy to be as much as £455 billion over the next decade.

As part of the Industrial Strategy, we are working closely with UK industry to create the right conditions for competitive, world leading manufacturing businesses to flourish and grow across the UK. Government recognises the importance of 3D printing and additive manufacturing and since 2012 The UK’s EPSRC and Innovate UK’s combined investment in additive manufacturing R&D, including capital grants, has been well over £200 million, helping to develop and maintain UK capability in additive in the UK. In addition we have invested over £300m in the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, including establishing the National Centre for Net Shape and Addictive Manufacturing housed in the Manufacture Technology Centre in Coventry. Its aim is to develop production-ready additive manufacturing processes, to overcome barriers to wide-scale adoption, and to work on legislative and standardisation issues to support the commercialisation of the innovation and new technologies such as 3D printing.