One of the 3-D printing world’s rising stars has claimed two major business awards in recognition for the way he has grown his company while competing against international rivals.
RYSE 3D’s Mitchell Barnes was the double winner at
Business Desk’s West Midlands Leadership Awards recently, beating off competition from some of the region’s brightest stars to claim the
Company Leader of the Year (up to 50 employees) and the overall
Leader of the Year titles.
The 28-year-old founder has come a long way from starting the firm in his mother’s garage with a few small 3-D printers to now working with 23 of the world’s leading hypercar projects, driving domestic and international sales past the £5 million barrier in the process. An impressive investment blueprint has also been signed off, which will see the business invest heavily in automation to achieve greater efficiencies and widen its capability.
He impressed judges - including Henrietta Brealey (CEO of the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce), Abbie Vlahakis (CEO of Millennium Point) and Andrew Lovett (CEO of the Black Country Living Museum) - with his eye for innovation and his passion for disrupting the 3-D printing world, proving this rapidly emerging discipline can be used to manufacture production parts in low- to medium-volume.
Mitchell was also praised for his leadership style, combining managing commercial revenue growth and international expansion with developing the next generation of technology specialists through the in-house mentoring scheme.
Mitchell said: “Wow, just wow! Never did I think I would win one award, let alone taking away the
Leader of the Year award. There was so much talent in the room, with many of my peers possessing lots more experience,.” He started RYSE 3D after offering to save his fellow students money by 3-D printing their final car designs instead of using clay alternatives.
“The accolades show what you can achieve when you have courage in your convictions and are not afraid to push boundaries in the sectors you operate in. We have done this in 3-D printing and are now one of the fastest-growing companies in our space. It’s a real learning curve and I suppose I’m learning on the job. There’s no way I could do it without the team here at Shipston-on-Stour. We have doubled the workforce in the last 18 months and that has been a task in itself.”
New revenue streamWith new opportunities emerging at a rate of knots, Mitchell identified the need for a large format FDM printer last year but was faced with a significant level of investment that wasn’t really in RYSE 3D’s reach at that stage. Rather than throw in the towel, he instead set his engineers and AM specialists the task of developing the company’s own 3-D printer that could be used not just internally but also sold around the world - creating a new revenue stream for RYSE 3-D in the process.
A year later and LANDR is the result, a high-powered 3-D printer that offers flexible capacity. Its nearest competitor costs 10-times more, is three times the weight and is twice the size, making it more difficult to fit into shopfloor environments.
The 3-D printer offers an expansive 500 x 500 x 500mm build volume that gives users the scope to build larger and more complex parts and can be applied to rapid prototyping and volume production for end-use in automotive, aerospace, healthcare and the consumer sectors.
King’s Award-winning RYSE 3D is excited to offer this cutting-edge technology — designed, developed and built in the UK - at a price point that makes it accessible to SMEs, tech disruptors, and entrepreneurs. Now, they can enjoy the same level of precision, quality, and capacity that was once reserved for larger competitors.
Mitchell concluded: “LANDR is now producing thousands of production parts every month at our facility in Warwickshire and external sales are increasing every month. It is a triumph for UK manufacturing. The really exciting news is we are already developing an additional suite of LANDR products, which will be revealed over the coming months.”