Sandvik exits 3D printing, sells remaining Osprey powder stake to Mimir

Sandvik is bowing out of additive manufacturing with a sale that strips the company back to its powder roots. On May 29, 2026, the group said it agreed to divest its Additive Manufacturing business to Mimir, a Swedish investment firm, with closing expected in the third quarter of 2026 after regulatory approvals. The deal will also trigger an impairment loss of about SEK 230 million, with no cash impact.

That exit closes a bet Sandvik once framed as a full-stack play. In July 2019, the company bought a 30% stake in BEAMIT, then used Formnext 2019 in Frankfurt to promote a combined AM value chain running from metal powders to finished components. The pitch made sense on paper: Sandvik brought materials science, wear-resistant metals and the Osprey powder platform, while BEAMIT brought additive production and finishing. Together, they pushed nickel-based superalloys, titanium and Osprey 2507 super-duplex stainless steel toward demanding applications in offshore, marine, aerospace, mining and nuclear parts.

The problem was not lack of ambition. It was keeping that ambition aligned with a traditional industrial group’s priorities year after year. By its 2023 Capital Markets Day, Sandvik had already revised its additive manufacturing strategy to focus primarily on metal powders and opened a strategic review of the additive services business. In September 2024, the company followed with broader exits from non-strategic businesses and charges of about SEK 390 million, including roughly SEK 140 million tied to the write-down of its BEAMIT stake and about SEK 250 million tied to DWFritz Automation.

Sandvik’s Osprey powder business itself is hardly a startup side project. The company says the range includes more than 2,000 alloy variants and more than 400 distinct alloys, built on more than 50 years of atomisation experience. Mimir says that platform now has exposure to structurally growing markets including defense, space, medical technology and energy, which is a cleaner fit for a powders business than the services-heavy AM model Sandvik once tried to assemble.

That is the real lesson in this exit. The durable businesses in additive manufacturing are the ones that stay focused long enough to turn materials know-how into repeatable output, not the ones that keep chasing the whole stack because it sounds complete. Sandvik spent years trying to make powder, parts and post-processing work under one roof. Now it is selling what is left of that effort and leaving Osprey to someone else who wants to keep the powder business, not the broader AM dream.