Proto Labs announced the closing of major European facilities.
The two sites being closed include a injection molding facility in Eschenlohe, and their direct metal laser sintering site located in Putzbrunn, just outside of Munich.
The manufacturing service has facilities across the US, but only a few in Europe. The one remaining is Hubs, formerly 3D Hubs, based in Amsterdam. However, Hubs is a manufacturing network, rather than an in-house manufacturing facility.
Proto Labs expanded into Europe some years ago, acquiring existing manufacturing services in 2015. Now it seems they are withdrawing from regional production in Europe.
According to a report on MSN:
”Discontinued services will be fulfilled through internal manufacturing facilities and a network of manufacturing partners.”
In other words, they are likely routing outstanding customer work to US sites or to Hubs networking partners. Note that the Hubs network would include partners located in Europe, but they are independently operated, rather than directly by Proto Labs.
Evidently Proto Labs will incur restructuring costs of up to US$6M to close the facilities, mainly directed at severance pay for staff.
The question is, why would Proto Labs close these facilities? As always, the answer is to follow the money. It’s very likely that the sites were not providing sufficient return for their investment, and Proto Labs must have felt they were unable to rectify the situation.
What’s curious is that they are simply closing the sites, rather than selling them to interested parties. Perhaps they do not want to encourage competitors by doing so, or they may be moving the equipment to other Proto Labs sites, making sales less attractive.
Proto Labs is a publicly traded company that we track on our weekly leaderboard, and today their stock price has taken a bit of a dent. That’s expected when sites are closed. On the other hand, Proto Labs is closing the sites for long term reasons, and it may be that their financials will look better after the smoke clears.
Via MSN
