Young 3D printing expert is named ‘Leader of the Year’ for West Midlands

One of the 3D printing world’s rising stars has claimed two major business awards in recognition for the way he has grown his company 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.

RYSE 3D’s 28-year-old founder has come a long way from starting the firm in his mum’s garage with a few small 3D printers to now working with 23 of the world’s leading hypercar projects, and driving domestic and international sales past the £5m barrier. An impressive investment blueprint has also been signed off that 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 passion for disrupting the 3D printing world, proving this rapidly emerging discipline can be used to manufacture production parts in low to medium volumes.

Mitchell Barnes 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.

He says: “Wow, just wow! Never did I think I’d win one award, let alone taking away the main ‘Leader of the Year’ award. There was so much talent in the room, with many of my peers boasting lots more experience. 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’ve done this in 3D printing and are now one of the fastest-growing companies in our space.”

He continues: “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’ve doubled the workforce in the past 18 months and that has been a task in itself.”

With new opportunities emerging at a rate of knots, Mitchell Barnes 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 additive manufacturing specialists the task of developing the company’s own 3D printer that could be used internally and also sold across the world – creating a new revenue stream in the process.

Some 12 months later and LANDR is the result, a high-power 3D printer that offers flexible capacity. According to RYSE 3D, its nearest competitor is 10 times the cost, three times the weight and twice the size, making it difficult to fit into shop-floor operations. The printer offers a 500 x 500 x 500 mm build volume that gives users the scope to build larger and more complex parts.

King’s Award-winning RYSE 3D says it is offering this cutting-edge technology – design, developed and built in the UK – at a price point that makes it accessible to SMEs, tech disruptors and entrepreneurs.

Mitchell Barnes concludes: “LANDR is now producing thousands of production parts every month at our facility in Warwickshire and external sales are increasing every month. It’s 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.”