A German Construction Giant 3D-Printed Its HQ and Immediately Started a New Division

From One Building to a Whole Division

Matthäi Schlüsselfertigbau could have treated its new headquarters as a one-off demonstration. Instead, the company used the project to justify a permanent division. The subsidiary of German construction group Matthäi has established its own construction 3D printing operation, partnering with PERI 3D Construction to bring concrete printing in-house rather than outsourcing it job by job.

The move follows the completion of a two-story, 364 square meter office in Selsingen, Lower Saxony. The walls of both floors were printed in roughly 105 hours using a COBOD BOD2 gantry printer and Holcim's TectorPrint cementitious material. The building has been occupied since July 2026.

What the Building Actually Proved

The Selsingen office stands about 7.4 meters high, 22.5 meters long, and 13.5 meters deep. Usable space splits into 170 square meters on the ground floor and 194 square meters above. The walls went up directly from the digital model without the formwork traditional construction requires. PERI 3D Construction acted as technology partner and supervisor during printing, working with architects Schulenburg and planners Mense-Korte.

The project gave Matthäi's team real-world conditions to learn from. Before the print started, they went through intensive training from PERI. During the build, they handled most of the operation themselves, with PERI stepping in only for technical questions. That handoff from guided project to independent execution is what made an in-house division plausible.

Why a Construction Company Would Buy Its Own Printer

The pattern is familiar in other industries: a firm tests a new process on a internal project, then scales it into a product line. Matthäi did exactly that. Rather than remain a customer of PERI's printing services, it bought a COBOD BOD2 in a 6-10-4 configuration. The resulting print volume is 13.5 meters wide, 24 meters long, and 9 meters high, which opens residential and commercial applications beyond a single office building.

Philip Lund-Nielsen, co-founder of COBOD International, put it plainly: 'Matthäi printed a two-story office building and then set up its own printing division. That step, from one project to an in-house capability, is exactly what we want to see. It shows construction 3D printing has moved from demonstration into everyday business.'

For context, Matthäi is one of Germany's twenty largest construction groups, with more than 3,300 employees and revenue around one billion euros. Its new division is not a startup experiment. It is a core capability within a firm that already manages large-scale infrastructure projects.

What This Means for the Industry

When a contractor buys a printer rather than hires a printing specialist, the market has shifted. Matthäi is not alone. In Qatar, UCC Holding operates two COBOD BODXL printers on a school project. In each case, the company running the equipment is a construction firm, not a 3D printing vendor. That changes the economics of who sells the machines, who trains the operators, and who owns the finished walls.

The Selsingen office also carries a regional first. It is the first 3D-printed building in Northern Germany, a point the Matthäi Group highlighted in its announcement. The printed walls, combined with conventional roofing and finishes, suggest a hybrid model where 3D printing handles the geometry-heavy structural work and traditional trades handle the interiors. That is a practical path for existing contractors to adopt the technology without rebuilding their entire supply chain.

The Bottom Line

Matthäi's story is not about a spectacular new printer or a world-record building. It is about a large construction company deciding that 3D concrete printing is mature enough to become a permanent line of business. The printed headquarters served as both a functional office and a working proof of concept. Now that the building is occupied and the division is formed, the question is whether other contractors will follow the same playbook: print something real, learn from it, then buy the machine.