Ontario company using bioplastics in 3D printing

By Kelly Daynard for AgInnovation Ontario    Source: Aginnovation

As an international development student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Jeremy Hedges was always interested in companies that showed leadership in environmental innovation.

One year after graduation, this entrepreneur is the owner of Inksmith, a Kitchener-based 3D printing company rapidly becoming recognized for its leading-edge work in incorporating bioplastics in its technology.

Inksmith is a full service 3D printing bureau for 3D printing, selling 3D printers and filament as well as printing and design services. 3D printing is a technology that prints – or makes – three dimensional solid objects from a digital file, using plastics (or spools of filament) as their medium.

In April 2016, the company was selected to be one of five teams in the Google for Entrepreneurs program. This gives the Inksmith team access to mentorship from Google engineering, marketing and PR experts – all great resources for a new business.

The potential is great and its early success is testament to that.

“It’s been a pretty crazy start up for us,” says Hedges.

In InkSmith’s first month of business, they sold out of printers and nearly cleared their inventory of materials. Hedges is now working to hire more staff to keep up with the demand.

His goal is to push the business towards being 100 per cent agricultural based and he’s looking to bioplastics to make that vision a reality.