Stratasys Highlights Food-Safe Photopolymers and Packaging Applications at Vienna Summit

Stratasys brought a clear message to the Aicomp Summit 2026 in Vienna last week: additive manufacturing has concrete, production-ready applications for the packaging industry, from on-demand spare parts to a new food-safe photopolymer developed in collaboration with Henkel.

The three-day event, which ran March 11–13 at the Austrian capital, gave Stratasys a platform to walk through use cases spanning tooling and flexible parts production. On the tooling side, the company highlighted mold inserts, grippers, gauges, and fixtures as prime candidates for 3D printing, alongside the ability to produce spare parts on demand to keep assembly lines moving. Zoller, speaking with Packaging Insights live from the conference floor, framed the maintenance angle in straightforward terms: "If companies have a manufacturing line and some parts go missing, or something breaks, with the 3D printer, they can be directly reprinted, and the assembly line could be fixed, and then get back up to speed for production."

Prototyping and tool material versatility rounded out the production efficiency story. Stratasys positioned its solution as enabling rapid, cost-efficient prototype production for design work, while also pushing into territory that goes well beyond standard polymer tooling. "We can develop a metal tool to replace a polymer tool. We can also produce paper pulp tools, expanded PS or expanded PP tools, as well as foam tools, and then companies can produce the packaging parts with the tools," Zoller explained.

The most technically significant reveal was the photopolymer Stratasys developed jointly with Henkel for the Origin 3D printer. The material is rigid and chemically resistant, engineered specifically for food and pharmaceutical applications, with low migration properties designed to reduce leachable substances. That last point matters considerably for anyone printing parts that contact food or drug products, where leachables testing is a regulatory prerequisite. Zoller was direct about where the material stands on certification: "The material is developed to fulfill European and US Food and Drug Administration certification standards. But we also need to obtain more certifications, such as for higher temperature food packaging or high alcoholic food packaging."

That distinction is worth noting carefully. The photopolymer was developed with EU and FDA standards in mind, but Zoller's own words confirm that additional certifications for higher-temperature and high-alcohol food contact scenarios are still in progress. Anyone evaluating the material for those specific use cases will need to track the certification pathway before committing to production workflows.

With packaging converters under constant pressure to cut waste, shorten development cycles, and keep lines running, the combination of on-demand tooling, rapid prototyping, and a food-contact-grade photopolymer positions Stratasys to argue for a broader role in the sector than most AM vendors have staked out. The Origin platform's place at the center of the material story also signals continued investment in that printer line as Stratasys pursues regulated-industry applications.