LAMA, a Santiago-based firm based in August 2025, is utilizing industrial robotic arms fitted with specialised polymer extruders from the Italian firm REV3RD to supply large-format design objects and concrete buildings from recycled plastic waste. The corporate works with high-density polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyethylene terephthalate sourced from packaging, agricultural plastics, mining waste, fruit export crates, and discarded fishing nets.
Round materials sourcing
Past utilizing post-industrial plastic streams as feedstock, LAMA changed standard stabilizing components in its polymer blends with calcium carbonate derived from floor mussel shells sourced from Chiloé, a Chilean archipelago with a significant shellfish trade. The substitution represents a secondary round loop inside the firm’s manufacturing course of.
The workforce offered this work at Formnext 2025 in Frankfurt, the additive manufacturing trade’s largest annual commerce truthful, the place they have been invited to exhibit by the Technical College of Darmstadt.
“One of these digital fabrication isn’t just a know-how: it’s a new approach of manufacturing that makes it attainable to show waste into helpful objects with excessive design worth and a a lot decrease environmental footprint,” stated Juan Cristóbal Karich, Co-Founder and Director of Design and Expertise at LAMA. “These supplies are light-weight, chemically resistant, and mechanically strong, they usually can final for many years at a decrease price than conventional supplies.”
Karich famous that the recycled polymer elements may be enhanced with flame-retardant, antistatic, and UV components, and bolstered with fibers to increase their suitability for furnishings, structure, and high-performance elements.
Regional ambitions
LAMA’s industrial targets embody architects, municipalities, designers, and companies in search of to combine sustainable manufacturing strategies into city and architectural tasks. The corporate’s founders body large-scale additive manufacturing with recycled supplies as a possible new trade class for the area.
“Latin America has huge flows of plastic waste, whereas on the similar time dealing with rising demand for city infrastructure and sustainable design options. Giant-scale 3D printing makes it attainable to attach each worlds,” stated Francisco Cruz, Co-Founder and Basic Supervisor of LAMA.
Experimental tasks in different geographies have demonstrated robotic printing utilized to bridges, housing, and concrete buildings, with documented reductions in building time and materials waste. LAMA’s acknowledged purpose is to use comparable strategies in Latin America utilizing recycled plastics as the first feedstock.