Irish 3D printing SME specialising in sustainable biopolymer materials and custom additive manufacturing supply chains.
Ocean Print Limited (trading as WAZP) is an Irish SME operating at the intersection of additive manufacturing technology and sustainable materials development. Their practical work spans the full product development cycle — from prototype fabrication through to volume manufacturing — with a specific focus on replacing conventional commodity polymers with biopolymer-based alternatives suited to 3D printing processes. In their earlier EU work they contributed expertise on custom-product supply chain design and business model innovation for manufacturing. More recently, they have pivoted toward the materials science side of additive manufacturing, working on the substitution of standard plastics with sustainable, bio-derived feedstocks.
Both iBUS and DeMANS involve additive manufacturing contexts, with DeMANS explicitly addressing design and manufacture for additive manufacturing technologies including prototype and volume fabrication.
DeMANS (2021–2026) is dedicated to developing sustainable materials and biopolymers to replace standard commodity polymers in additive manufacturing feedstocks.
iBUS (2015–2019) focused on an integrated business model for customer-driven custom product supply chains, suggesting WAZP contributed manufacturing and production expertise to that consortium.
DeMANS keywords include technology roadmap and innovation cycle, indicating WAZP contributes to structured R&D planning alongside technical development work.
In their first H2020 project (iBUS, 2015–2019), WAZP contributed to manufacturing supply chain and business model innovation — no materials-specific keywords are recorded from that period, suggesting their role was more operational or commercial than technical. By 2021, with DeMANS, their focus shifted decisively toward materials science: sustainable feedstocks, biopolymers, and polymer substitution for additive manufacturing. This represents a meaningful deepening — from manufacturing-as-a-process toward the underlying materials that make sustainable additive manufacturing viable.
WAZP is moving from commercial manufacturing participation toward technical materials research, positioning themselves as a specialist in sustainable feedstock development for additive manufacturing — a fast-growing niche as EU sustainability regulations tighten on plastics.
WAZP has participated exclusively as a consortium partner across both projects, never taking on a coordinator role — consistent with an SME that contributes specific technical or industrial expertise rather than leading large research programmes. Despite only two projects, they have accumulated 19 distinct consortium partners across 10 countries, which indicates they join sizeable, multi-partner consortia rather than small bilateral collaborations. This suggests they are comfortable operating as a specialist contributor within structured European research partnerships.
WAZP has built a consortium network of 19 partners spanning 10 countries from just two projects, indicating they participate in broad European partnerships rather than narrow bilateral arrangements. No single-country concentration is evident from the data.
WAZP occupies a rare dual position: an SME with both manufacturing supply-chain experience and active involvement in materials R&D for additive manufacturing — most players specialise in one or the other. Their focus on biopolymers as drop-in replacements for commodity plastics in 3D printing is timely given EU Green Deal pressures on plastic use, and their MSCA-RISE participation (DeMANS) shows they can bridge the gap between academic research networks and industrial application. For consortium builders, they offer an industrial SME voice with genuine materials development capability, not just end-user validation.
