China’s titanium reserves cannot be used directly in production

An underappreciated constraint: China’s significant titanium reserves are mostly titano-magnetite  and rock ilmenite — neither of which can be used directly in sponge production or chlorination processes. These materials require intermediate conversion steps to become usable feedstock.

China relies on importing raw titanium concentrates to satisfy its downstream sponge and pigment plants. However, this import dependency is becoming increasingly precarious as global governments push back on exporting the value of their natural resources to China. Raw concentrate pricing has been rising, and exporting countries (Australia, African producers, etc) are under pressure from their own governments to capture more of the downstream processing for greater value-add.

This creates a structural vulnerability for China’s dominance: while China controls massive sponge and pigment capacity, it is not vertically integrated at the feedstock level in the way often assumed.

China’s market share and global pricing backlash

By flooding the market, Chinese producers have acted as global price-setters at the margin.

The effects of Covid (a demand crash in 2020, then restocking boom in 2021) exacerbated price swings, but it was Chinese expansion that turned what could have been a recovery into a glut.