Backed by approximately $650,000 in federal, state and private investment, a regional consortium is working to promote the New River Valley and Danville areas’ high-tech manufacturing.
The group specifically focuses on additive manufacturing, which is essentially large-scale 3D printing to build an object layer by layer, and advanced materials, a broad term that includes metals, polymers, ceramics and other substances used to make parts and products lighter, stronger or more durable.
The consortium’s goals include helping manufacturers adopt these technologies, connecting businesses and educational institutions to turn research into commercial products and generally promoting the New River Valley and Danville regions as a “tech hub” for additive manufacturing and advanced materials.
The regions already had some relationships among stakeholders involved in these technologies before this effort got underway, but officials now are working to formalize them into a more cohesive coalition. Defining a strategy for promoting this part of the commonwealth as a key player in additive manufacturing and advanced materials could also help secure further federal funding down the road.
“We are both identifying companies who use additive manufacturing technology and are identifying the ways in which we as a tech hub can assist them, and also manufacturers generally in the region who have use for additive manufacturing technology, and just making sure they’re speaking to each other,” said Emma Carroll, regional innovation officer with the New River Valley Regional Commission. The commission is the consortium’s lead organization, and Carroll was hired to coordinate its efforts.
The group also hopes to boost workforce education about high-tech manufacturing, such as by helping expand the geographic footprint of the GO TEC program, which is run by the Danville-based Institute for Advanced Learning and Research and introduces middle-schoolers to engineering and tech careers.
The partnership of dozens of businesses, schools and local governments has launched a website, AM2Virginia.org, to promote its goals. Members have been connecting with local companies to hear about their needs and brainstorm how such technologies can help them.
Examples of companies involved include MELD Manufacturing in Christiansburg, which makes industrial-scale 3D printers; IperionX, which produces titanium alloys from recycled scrap at its South Boston location; and Hollingsworth & Vose, whose Floyd County facility makes materials used in filters and batteries.
Nanci Hardwick, CEO of MELD Manufacturing, said her firm and its spin-off, MELD Printworks, which specializes in custom 3D-printed parts, are seeing new interest from Virginia businesses. She credits the consortium’s efforts with creating that awareness.
“Virginia manufacturers who have no additive program are discovering additive, are discovering that there are resources in their backyard, and they are now exploring parts from Printworks and machines from MELD,” she said.
Additive manufacturing has several advantages, Hardwick said, including the ability to quickly prototype custom parts or fill a need when a business requires a small quantity of something. It allows companies to avoid long supply chain delays, and in certain cases it can be cheaper than traditional manufacturing.
As an example, Hardwick cited the aerospace industry, which often needs large metal parts for wings and bulkheads. Buying a huge block of metal to start with would be expensive and would require significant time and labor to reduce it to the finished product, she said.
“If I have to buy a giant block of metal that’s measured by meters and then machine down to get maybe wall thicknesses, really tiny, by the time I’m done machining, I have more metal on the floor than in the part,” Hardwick said.
Another key player in the regional consortium is Virginia Tech, whose College of Engineering’s Advanced Manufacturing Team researches additive manufacturing and advanced materials.
John Provo and Sarah Lyon-Hill of the university’s Center for Economic and Community Engagement have gone on multiple “listening tours,” visiting companies and learning more about their work with these technologies or how the technologies could benefit them.
Lyon-Hill said that the visits have revealed that the region’s advanced materials companies serve a breadth of sectors such as defense and health.
From there, she said, the questions for the tech hub to tackle have turned to: “How can we help to grow their technology, or is there any technology that we can bring to them? … How do we grow this region in terms of advanced manufacturing?”
The regional consortium grew out of a federal grant competition funded by the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The U.S. Economic Development Administration solicited entries from groups around the country seeking to develop their own “tech hubs” in various industries.
In late 2023, the New River Valley/Danville group was awarded a two-year, $500,000 strategy grant. It has also received a GO Virginia grant of about $99,000 plus another $50,000 worth of in-kind staff time from Virginia Tech and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
Under the EDA’s initial plan, groups that received a strategy grant would be better positioned to later receive a larger grant potentially worth tens of millions of dollars if a second round of funding were announced.
The future of that Biden-era program remains unclear as President Donald Trump and Congress have shifted many federal funding priorities.
Nonetheless, Kevin Byrd, executive director of the New River Valley Regional Commission, said that the consortium uses “politically agnostic” planning processes in building the regional network.
“This work is reflective of what’s unique and genuine to our region,” he said. “And the opportunities that we’ll have coming out of this aren’t relying upon a single funder, whether that’s federal or state.”