Demand For High-performance Aviation Metal

Titanium metal has low specific gravity and high specific strength. Its alloy is of great significance in the aerospace field, and has been widely used in recent years.In addition to military and aerospace fields, titanium alloy is also widely used in chemical industry, metallurgy, medical treatment, sports and leisure and other fields.

The chain of non-ferrous metals is: titanium concentrate → titanium tetrachloride → sponge titanium → titanium ingot/titanium alloy → titanium material. The chain of chemical coatings is: titanium concentrate → titanium tetrachloride → titanium dioxide.  The upstream of the two fields share ilmenite, rutile and other resources.  

Global titanium consumption is closely related to the development of aerospace industry.  Since 2000, China's titanium material demand is mainly concentrated in the low-end petrochemical industry. With the formulation of China's 13th Five-Year Plan in 2016 and the update of the "three-step" strategy of national defense and military modernization, the amount of titanium used in the aerospace industry has been increasing. For military titanium, due to the particularity of the military industry, it needs to accept the supervision of the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (STIND), adopt a strict administrative licensing system, and have more stringent requirements on product quality, with higher requirements on "high uniformity, high purity and high stability" of titanium.  In 2020, China's total titanium consumption reached 94,000 tons, of which about 17,000 tons were used in aerospace, accounting for 18.4% of the total consumption.Although the proportion of high-end titanium used in China's aerospace, shipbuilding and ocean engineering has been continuously optimized in recent years, compared with the global titanium material demand structure, the proportion of high-end titanium is still low, and the future growth space is broad.