German Builder Matthäi Launches 3D Printing Division After Printing Its HQ

Matthäi Schlüsselfertigbau, one of Germany's twenty largest construction groups, has formally launched an in-house construction 3D printing division. The decision follows the completion of the company's new two-story headquarters in Selsingen, Lower Saxony, whose walls were printed in roughly 105 hours using a COBOD BOD2.

The building stands 7.4 meters tall and 22.5 meters long, with 364 square meters of usable space across both floors. The walls went up in two full storeys using Holcim's TectorPrint cementitious material. Foundation, base slab, floors, and roof all came from conventional construction methods. That division of labor is the practical shape of construction 3D printing today, and it is also what makes the project a credible template rather than a showpiece: the printer handled the vertical envelope while the remaining trades worked as they always have.

What makes this more than a one-off demonstration is the ownership model. Matthäi could have hired COBOD or PERI 3D Construction for individual projects. Instead, the company used its own headquarters as the pilot, then kept the capability in-house with PERI as a technology partner rather than as the contractor.

That pattern is spreading. In the US, general contractor FMGI took ownership of Alquist's A1 robotic arm printers through a financing deal rather than leasing the service. In Qatar, contractor UCC Holding runs its own COBOD BODXL printers on a school project. The common thread is that construction companies are buying the equipment and learning to run it themselves.

Bernd Mergard, managing director at Matthäi Schlüsselfertigbau, put it plainly: the company is proud to have delivered the first 3D printed building in Northern Germany, and it intends to repeat the process. The new division gives Matthäi a commercial offering to sell to clients who want faster, more flexible wall systems without waiting for a specialist contractor to bring a printer to site.

Philip Lund-Nielsen of COBOD framed the move as a milestone for the industry. When a builder prints its own office and then keeps the printer, that shifts the conversation from technology demonstration to routine business. Whether other German construction groups follow the same path will depend on how quickly Matthäi can turn a single reference project into a repeatable sales pipeline.