Abstract:
This study investigates the fragmented nature of the global and local titanium metal value chains. South
Africa has the fourth most abundant titanium reserves in the world. However, South Africa mainly
exports titanium ore and imports value-added titanium products, which impacts the potential to derive
more economic benefit from this resource. For South Africa to benefit from its titanium reserves, an
understanding of the current fragmented nature of the global titanium value chain would assist in
entering the global titanium industry. Information on the global and South African titanium value chains
was collected by means of a desktop study. It was found that the leading countries operating within both
the upstream and the downstream titanium industry are the USA, China, Japan, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
The key drivers that caused fragmentation were identified as technology, markets, production costs, and
the availability of titanium mineral reserves. An important outcome of this study is the identification of
the local need for a technological foundation in support of downstream titanium processing to marketcompetitive
titanium mill and powder products.
