US must ramp up titanium capacity to avoid squeeze, Project Blue founder says

Titanium isn’t factoring much into current critical minerals mining news headlines the way copper, gold or lithium are, but its importance could become more evident as the conversations around defense metals evolve – and as supply chain risks are exposed.Considered a critical mineral by the US, EU and Canada because it is essential for defense, aerospace, medical, and industrial technologies, titanium  has a unique strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance with few substitutes.Titanium is used in two distinctly different forms: as titanium dioxide (TiO2) for pigments and as titanium metal alloyed for aerospace applications. The vast majority – over 90% globally of mined titanium is processed into the pigment – a looming supply chain gap  UK-headquartered market intelligence company Project Blue outlines in its report “Metals and the Security of Nations”.The report details how geopolitics, especially China’s dominance and export controls, are disrupting defense supply chains for materials like titanium and rare earths. In North America, titanium is mined in Florida, Georgia and Virginia in the US and in Canada’s Quebec province for use in pigments – mainly used in paint. From a US perspective, the fact that the titanium that is mined is processed into pigment and not metal, makes the actual titanium mining in the US irrelevant for the aerospace industry as US mines still produce for the pigment market and not for metals. Western aerospace manufacturers will need 1.6m tonnes of titanium by 2044, the firm says, but notes supply is increasingly controlled by geopolitical rivals Russia and China.Project Blue’s titanium analysis hones in on the risks posed by Russia’s and China’s grip on the global titanium supply chain to Western aerospace programs.Key to these are titanium sponge – an early form of pure titanium metal later used to produce metal ingots, powders and alloys. The near-term gap is less about mineral mining, and more about aerospace-grade sponge capacity and certification, the firm notes.Russia is still the leading source of aerospace-grade titanium. Meanwhile, China’s share of global titanium metals has jumped from 40% in 2019 to over 75% in 2025, with growing trade ties to Moscow.“With China using rare earth and critical metals as leverage in ongoing trade disputes, China could throttle titanium exports to disrupt Boeing and Airbus production, delay Western defence programmes, and give China’s COMAC and J-36 programmes a strategic advantage,” Project Blue says.China’s aviation industry includes the state-owned commercial manufacturer COMAC, known for its C919 narrow-body jet, and the military focused Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (CAC), which is developing a sixth-generation stealth fighter tentatively designated as the J-36. “Titanium is essentially a defence metal –  it can be up to 20% or more of the markets for total titanium consumption that goes into defence. An F 15 can be up to 40% in weight of titanium. There’s some serious volume going in these jet planes,” Project Blue Founder and Director, Dr. Nils Backeberg told MINING.com in an interview. “We’ve seen investments in titanium capacity, you’ve got Comac coming out and building their own sort of aerospace program in China.”Aerospace markets have still been depressed since covid, due to declines in aircraft travel, Backeberg noted.In April, Airbus SE revealed plans to source some metal to manufacture its aircraft from Saudi Arabia as part of a widebody aircraft deal with the kingdom’s flag carrier.The European manufacturer signed a deal to buy 2.5 billion Riyals ($666 million) worth of raw material, mainly titanium, from Saudi Arabia. Graphic: Project BlueSupply chain gaps“The door blew out at the beginning of 2024 – there were all these lenses looking at the supply chain and identifying where these sources are coming from, and that there were shortcuts made, and the specs weren’t met anymore,” Backeberg said.He pointed out that titanium mining is an industry that’s ‘effectively divorced from the titanium metal industry’.“That is because the vast majority of ilmenite and rutile, which are the minerals for titanium that are mined, go into pigments,” Backeberg said. “And that is the big volume market for titanium minerals.”“There’s various pigment producers across the world. And China has massively invested in pigment capacity that’s flooded the market and destroyed that market elsewhere,” he said. Backeberg added that some pigment TiO2 facilities are now going into liquidation driven by macroeconomic trends and investments. “This is where all the geopolitics is coming into play,” he said.  “The US used to be a massive producer, but the Henderson plant was the last one really operating.” “In the US, the sponge [mining] closed in 2021. So they’re reliant on importing sponge, it doesn’t actually matter if the US buys ilmenite,” he said. US titanium melt capacity, (total industrial ability to melt and process titanium) is ramping up, Backeberg said,  through significant investments and expansion projects driven by strong demand from the aerospace and defense sectors, and supported by US government initiatives.“So the mine material, there’s bugger all they can do with that for the metal industry, because they can’t process it into sponge. “So they have to buy sponge – and there’s a lot of melting capacity being built up,” Backeberg said.Ramping up capacity in the USThe Henderson plant in  Nevada was historically operated by Titanium Metals Corporation (now Timet) as the last large-scale domestic titanium sponge producer. It was a significant site for US defense and aerospace, but eventually closed in 2020, making the U.S. fully reliant on imported titanium sponge, Backeberg said. Timet is constructing a new plant in West Virginia to melt titanium using large furnaces, powered by the industrial microgrid utilizing solar and battery storage technology. This facility is being built on the site of a former aluminum smelter.The company is investing nearly $868 million to build a new 500,000-square-foot facility to melt, roll, and finish aerospace-grade titanium, in North Carolina. The project, operating under the name “Project Aero,” could potentially be operational by 2027.Timet is also expanding its existing ingot plant in Pennsylvania to increase its electron-beam melting capacity by 8,500 tons per year.“The demand from a titanium perspective is you’re seeing the recovery from Boeing take place, the deliveries have been ramping up this year, and catching up to where Airbus is,” Backeberg said.  “And with NATO expenditures going up, all of this then adds into titanium demand for the different jet fighter planes that they want to produce.”“In the titanium industry, they’re seeing a very  positive narrative coming on the demand side,” he said. “With Japan ramping up, with Saudi Arabia supply as a new source, and with the US actually having its own melt capacity ramping up, this seems to be a sustainable supply chain to meet that, but it has to ramp up.”Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com