A young Warwickshire entrepreneur has gone from replacing his mom’s dishwasher with a homemade 3D printer to becoming arguably the youngest ever recipient of two King’s Award for Enterprise.

Mitchell Barnes, who is about to turn 30-years-old, founded RYSE 3D in 2017 after proving out the importance of additive manufacturing (AM) in future production techniques for university friends.

Since then, he has created one of the UK’s biggest disruptors in AM, supplying high performance production parts to 23 of the world’s hypercar projects and delivering complex components to exciting new contracts in aerospace, defence and energy.

These orders have taken the Shipston-on-Stour firm to nearly £5m in annual turnover, with nearly half of that emanating from international orders to the US, Denmark and Latvia.

Global success has led to the business securing the King’s Award for International Trade, following its earlier success in the ‘Innovation’ category in 2024.

Mitch, who runs the company with his brother Cameron. explains:

“To win one King’s Award is special, to win a second for our efforts in growing the business overseas is mind-blowing, I still can’t quite believe it."

“When I first started in additive manufacturing, I wanted to prove that we could go from prototyping into series production and that’s exactly what we’ve done…supplying the most complex automotive, aerospace and renewables components in batches of a few thousand and, in some cases, tens of thousands.”

He continued: “Importantly, we wanted to demonstrate that we could take UK technology and export it as something international firms want. The last three years have proved this was the right approach, with global sales up 2,322% since 2023."

“We have also expanded our reach. The US used to be our only destination and, whilst this will always be a primary market, we are now supplying clients in Denmark, France and Latvia.”

The growth in exports for RYSE 3D has given it the confidence to reinvest more than £1m into new printers, R&D, lighter materials and the launch of its own UK-engineered 3D ‘LANDR’ printer.

Its team has also expanded to 18, some of whom were coffee baristas transformed into 3D printing engineers.

The combination of its own large format printers and industry-leading technology has boosted its capacity to confidently print four million components every year.

Mitchell continued: “This is what makes all the hard work worthwhile. There is no greater sense of achievement, for our workforce and senior management team, than seeing a part carefully engineered in Shipston-on-Stour entering production overseas for a high-profile global brand."

“To have two concurrent King’s Awards is the stuff of dreams and every member of our team needs to take time out to appreciate what they have helped us achieve. We’ve already won work in the US based on winning one award, I can’t wait to get back overseas and tell people we are a double winning King’s Award business!”

RYSE 3D’s production process is highly scalable, requires no tooling investment and uses widely available engineering polymers.

This makes it easy to adopt internationally and attractive to companies looking to derisk supply chains, reduce capital expenditure and lower environmental impact – three features that are increasingly important to meet ‘Net Zero’ challenges and address recent global supply chain uncertainty.

Whilst automotive and motorsport offered it the initial market opportunity, the company is fast proving that 3D printing can also deliver production parts to aerospace, construction, energy generation, medical and defence.

Adam Archer, who switched from making coffees in the market town to leading a team of 3D printing engineers, concluded:

“The pace of evolution at RYSE is incredible and I still have to pinch myself when I think we’re making performance parts that are changing the way some of the most ambitious hypercars and technology are built."

“Our second King’s Award is the icing on the cake, and we look forward to using the prestigious accolade to help us secure more work and orders that see additive manufacturing expertise in Shipston-on-Stour exported all over the world.”

For further information, please visit here.