Russia-ukraine conflict threatens titanium supply chain
March 01, 2022
The escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine has raised concerns about the supply chain of titanium. Russia and Ukraine are the main supplier of titanium, with a small amount of domestic demand being met, and most of the exports providing sponge titanium or titanium materials to global customers. Once the situation deteriorates, in addition to the impact on titanium production in the region, the follow-up sanctions from Europe and the United States may restrict the export of Russian titanium, thus causing a tight supply of titanium in the market and triggering panic purchasing and hoarding behavior of downstream buyers. At present, the price of magnesium ingot, the main raw material of the main titanium metal, is high, coupled with the serious global inflation, driven by the sharp rise of other non-ferrous metals copper, aluminum and nickel, the price of titanium metal is likely to rise.
Russia avis tamar (VSMPO) is one of the world's largest maker of titanium sponge, production capacity of 34000 tons/year, also is the world's largest producer of titanium, account for more than 20% of the world titanium market share, is the main provider of Russian titanium airbus and Boeing aircraft surfaces using titanium have very big one part is supplied by the company.
Ukraine's Zaborsh Titanium and Magnesium joint enterprise is a sponge titanium factory with an annual capacity of 12,000 tons. In 2020, it exported 1,527 tons of sponge titanium to China, accounting for 32.34% of China's total import of sponge titanium.
Because of the complexity of smelting technology and the difficulty of processing, only the United States, Russia, Japan and China have mastered the complete titanium industrial production technology in the world at present, forming the pattern of the four leading countries. In addition, although There is no titanium sponge industry in Europe, titanium material processing and application technology is in the world's advanced level. Ukraine and Kazakhstan inherited parts of the Soviet union's titanium sponge industry. Baoti's titanium materials occupy the first place in the domestic market, its output ranks the second in the world, and it is one of the four major titanium and titanium alloy professional processing enterprises in the world.
In 2020, China exported 548.5 tons of titanium sponge, down 47.6% year on year. China's titanium sponge imports were 4,722.6 tons, down 33.9 percent year-on-year.
