Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Roche is working with Replique to ‘place 3D printing everywhere it makes sense to.’
The company had previously been utilising 3D printing locally at a range of sites across the world, but is now seeking to consolidate AM activity into a more defined strategy. Roche has more than 100 sites globally, but with its renewed focus on AM is focusing initially on the 20 biggest facilities, which include its research labs.
Roche is renowned for manufacturing drugs and diagnostic devices, with many of its products being used to support medical and pharmaceutical research. Within drug diagnostic devices, Roche has been ‘printing on a small scale’ for several years. There are some elements of existing devices that are already 3D printed, according to Roche's Head of 3DP Center of Excellence Piotr Motyka, but it has never been perceived internally as a ‘major production technology.’
“That’s what we’re trying to change now,” Motyka told TCT at Formnext 2025. “We were already quite successful with rapid prototyping or agile prototyping, reducing the product development times significantly, and now we’re looking forward to distributed manufacturing. This is the holy grail. I wouldn’t say it’s close, but this is where the value is the biggest, to produce near your customers in regional hubs.”
To support this effort, Replique is providing Roche with a digital warehousing capability that suppliers will be able to tap into to procure design files and other information relevant to the manufacture of Roche products. Replique has also plugged into internal Roche systems to make the ordering of products easier. Now, through Roche’s internal catalogues and ERP systems, orders can be placed via Replique, with Replique partners fulfilling the production and shipping requirements.
So far, Replique says the parts that have been manufactured for Roche have varied when it comes to applications, volumes, technologies and materials. Fused Filament Fabrication is understood to be the most utilised 3D printing technology by Roche, but there are application opportunities for SLS and SLA per Motyka.
Roche’s application of 3D printing is still in its early stages, but Motyka has found success in the updating of diagnostic devices.
“We had a small, home-developed device that was needed to bridge the technological gap between the older series of our product and the newer ones,” Motyka said. “The new ones are much more modern; they have a lot of additional electronic and connectivity [capability]. [In this example, the device] is a large laboratory platform [used for analysis], so they’re not to be replaced very often. We wanted our customers to have the same experience, so we ran a small series of hand-sized devices that are just a connectivity link; they offer this remote connection to the device.
“Together with Replique, we did a project of refreshing visually one of our large devices, so it was more of an experiment, but it triggered a discussion on how to place 3D printing in that [environment]. Instead of rebuilding it holistically, we focused on some external elements, giving it a fresh and new look as it was already not in line with the current design features. We proved a quick way of getting to this point, and we hope to go further with that.”
Other areas of interest for Roche with 3D printing technology are drug products and bioprinting. With the former, Roche has started with small accessories that ‘can make the doctor’s experience easier and safer’, and with the latter, Roche is exploring the creation of tissues that can be used for research in place of human and animal cadavers.
