A Roadmap for the Titanium Metal Industry of South Africa

Abstract

The South African titanium metal industry is underdeveloped and has a fragmented value chain. The aim of this study was to investigate fragmentation within the local titanium metal value chain by using industry technology roadmapping as a tool to comment on the completeness of each value chain stage. Roadmapping for the period 2021 to 2030 was applied to a novel value chain produced for the local titanium metal industry. Within the fragmented value chain, it was indicated that from the eight identified stages only four were established locally. The identified stages of the titanium metal value chain were: stage 1 - mineral reserves; stage 2 - slag; stage 3 – TiCl4; stage 4 – sponge; stage 5 – melted products; stage 6 – mill products; stage 7 – metal powder production and stage 8 – metal powder products. Stages 1, 2, 6 and 8 are already established in South Africa. The roadmapping type selected to address the fragmented South African titanium metal value chain was an industry technology roadmap. This type of roadmap focuses on forecasting the development, commercialisation and deployment of new technologies. The overall industry roadmap was designed using individual roadmaps for the value chain stages. These individual roadmaps were used as a guideline on what to include and what to exclude from the overall industry roadmap. The technology roadmap layout consisted of five layers namely market, product, technology, R&D, and resources. These roadmapping layers were applied to each stage of the titanium metal value chain resulting in the production of individual roadmaps for each stage. The roadmap model was based on the three fundamental questions in roadmapping: “Where are we now?” addressing the current state of each value chain stage, “Where do we want to go?” addressing the vision elements for each value chain stage and “How will we get there?” addressing how the vision elements would be achieved for each value chain stage. The methodology used in this study relied on data collection from two main sources. The first was primary data collected through conducting interviews and a survey. The main aim of the interviews (conducted with industry and R&D experts) was to establish a vision element for each of the titanium metal value chain stages which was validated though the survey. Secondary data was then combined with the collected expert driven data in order to follow the selected roadmapping approach and complete a roadmap for each of the value chain stages following the specified layers (top-down approach). The vision elements were then combined to obtain an overall South African titanium metal value chain vision. The consolidated vision, based on what should be included in the South African titanium metal value chain and what not, was used as driver for compiling the overall South African titanium metal industry roadmap. This was done by considering and combining the required actions needed from the value chain stage roadmaps (top-down visioning approach) to achieve the identified overall roadmap (bottom-up visioning approach). The newly developed vision for the South African titanium metal industry is: South Africa should continue to mine and upgrade titanium mineral concentrates in a sustainable and efficient manner. The country should commit to the establishment of two additional stages within the titanium metal value chain, which is TiCl4 production and titanium metal powder production. Capacity and expertise within the two already developed downstream stages (mill product and powder product production) should be expanded for both the local and the export markets. Within the mill product market, the focus should be on producing products for the medical, chemical and aerospace industries while the powder product markets should focus on medical, aerospace, leisure and automotive industries. In addition to the vision and roadmap establishment, other outcomes of this study indicated that the South African titanium metal industry is fragmented and should remain fragmented over the next decade. This thesis presents novel research on the production of a roadmap for a fragmented industry. To the best knowledge of the author, no other industry roadmap approach has first considered the production of individual roadmaps in a fragmented value chain and then combine them into a single overall industry technology roadmap. South Africa can apply the newly obtained titanium industry vision and roadmap, since there was no prior vision that addressed the development of the industry’s fragmented value chain. The newly produced roadmap can be used to advance and develop the South African titanium metal industry in order to improve local value addition to the already existing resources.