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From following to leading: China's titanium industry will usher in important development opportunities

Titanium, as the ninth most abundant element in the Earth's crust (0.63%), has formed a complete industrial system in modern times, although its industrial development history is less than a hundred years. Titanium ore deposits are mostly polymetallic coexisting minerals, and exist in the form of metal oxides. The titanium resources with industrial utilization value are mainly ilmenite, rutile, anatase, ilmenite, white titanium ore, and perovskite, among which ilmenite and rutile have abundant mineral resources.
According to the United States Geological Survey, the global reserves of titanium ore are 817 million tons (TiO2 equivalent), of which the reserves of ilmenite resources are 770 million tons, accounting for approximately 94.2%; The reserves of rutile resources are 47 million tons, accounting for approximately 5.8%. Except for Antarctica, the other six continents have abundant titanium ore resources distributed in more than 30 countries. Australia has the world's largest titanium reserves, followed by China, India, South Africa, Kenya, Brazil, Madagascar, Norway, Canada, Mozambique, Ukraine, the United States, Vietnam, and Sierra Leone. These 14 countries account for approximately 97% of the world's total titanium reserves.
China has abundant titanium ore resources. According to the 2018 China Mineral Resources Report by the former Ministry of Land and Resources, the confirmed reserves of titanium ore in 2017 were 819 million tons (TiO2 content). However, the proven reserves of high-quality titanium ore resources such as rutile are very small, accounting for only 2% of the proven reserves. Among the identified titanium resource reserves, ilmenite accounts for about 98%. A total of 142 titanium deposits have been discovered nationwide, mainly distributed in provinces (regions) such as Sichuan, Hebei, Hainan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Shanxi, Shandong, Shaanxi, and Henan. Among them, the confirmed reserves of titanium mines in Sichuan and Hebei account for 92% of the total national reserves.
It is worth mentioning that although China's titanium ore reserves and production rank first in the world, its overall grade is relatively low, and the proportion of high-quality titanium ore is small. In 2023, 5 million tons of titanium ore will be imported (with a dependence rate of 33%), and the dependence rate of rutile imports will reach 85%. In recent years, the import scale of titanium ore in China has far exceeded the export scale, maintaining a trade deficit. At the same time, the import volume of titanium ore in China is showing an overall upward trend, surpassing the 5 million ton mark in 2024, with a year-on-year increase of 18.87%; The import value continued to rise, increasing from 3.249 billion yuan in 2019 to 10.62 billion yuan, with an average annual compound growth rate of 26.73%; Its export volume and export value have also shown an overall upward trend, and will experience explosive growth in 2024, reaching 87600 tons and 604 million yuan respectively, with year-on-year growth of 258.77% and 173.14%, respectively.
With the upgrading of demand for titanium in high-end applications such as aerospace, medical devices, and 3D printing, the application scenarios of titanium products are also continuously expanding. Relying on the world's largest vanadium titanium magnetite resources (with reserves in the Panxi region accounting for 90% of the country's total), China's titanium industry is accelerating its transformation from a "titanium resource giant" to a "titanium technology powerhouse". Driven by high-end demands such as aerospace (C919 aircraft requires over 1000 tons of titanium annually) and ocean engineering (titanium for deep-sea equipment increases by 25% annually), it is expected that the proportion of high-end titanium materials will increase to 30% by 2030, and sponge titanium production capacity will exceed 250000 tons per year. Although facing challenges such as dependence on high-quality rutile imports and rising environmental costs, China is expected to build a globally competitive titanium industry chain through upgrading the chlorination process, breakthroughs in deep-sea mining technology, and recycling of recycled titanium (with a target recovery rate of 30%). Leading enterprises will usher in important development opportunities in the next five years.

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