3D PRINTING 2040
3d printing demolishes 40% of manufacturing and trade.
Key figures
My call, on the record since 2011: 30% of products 3D-printed, 40% of manufacturing, trade, and logistics disrupted by 2040.
The suits caught up: ING published the same 40%-of-world-trade-by-2040 call in its fast scenario in 2017, 6 years after me.
$1 trillion shifts to decentralized production by 2050.
The speed: sub-second 3D printing is here, Tsinghua printed parts in under 1 second with holographic light.
The scale: 1 factory in Shenzhen runs around 10,000 Bambu Lab 3D printers (Kings Huafast, 2026).
Fifteen years ago I said 40% of manufacturing, global trade, and logistics gets demolished by 2040. People laughed. Then ING, a bank, published the same 40% call in its fast scenario in 2017. Consultancies count printers and powder: Wohlers clocks the additive market growing 9.1% a year. I count what disappears: ships, warehouses, and 3 oceans of shipping containers.
Plain English: you print the product where you need it instead of sailing it around the world. I forecast 30% of products are 3D-printed and 40% of manufacturing, trade, and logistics is disrupted by 2040, with roughly $1 trillion shifting to decentralized production by 2050.
It is already here, quietly. Protolabs and Xometry: upload a file, get the part in days, the Amazon of manufacturing. Adidas and Nike print shoes; the Summitz factory builds them with 3 robot arms and 10 workers instead of 60. Bambu Lab sells 3D-printable toys with programmable electronics to your kids. In Shenzhen, Kings Huafast runs around 10,000 Bambu Lab printers in 1 factory, printing prototypes and small batches around the clock. And Tsinghua printed parts in under 1 second with holographic light, so "slow" just died as an excuse.
The mandate for leaders is a 2-step, and most will do neither: automate to win the 2030s with IoT and IIoT, then dematerialize toward the 2040s with additive manufacturing. Own not just the product but the print file, the materials spec, and the certification path. Your factory becomes a download. Your moat becomes the data.
