Titanium Price
Titanium is one of the most available elements in earth’s crust, and there is plenty of it around that should last for an eternity. Why would titanium be so expensive?
Pricing
Titanium is one of the most available elements in earth’s crust, and there is plenty of it around that should last for an eternity. Why would titanium be so expensive? It´s difficult to explain the titanium price by simple concepts, since the wide spread use of titanium across all the industrial sectors. Therefore, titanium prices need to be looked at in their different instances and to the different components of the cost of titanium.
Titanium sponge
One does not trade titanium on the stock market as other raw materials. Analysts tend to evaluate the titanium price per kilo based on the price of titanium sponge, which is the primary result of titanium ore processing. Extracting pure titanium from the primary titanium ore is an extensive process, making it approximate six times as expensive as stainless steel.
Sponge is considered as the first commercial form of the metal and the sponge price is often cited as a primary basis for the analysis of the market fluctuations. Titanium sponge is the result of reducing titanium tetrachloride with magnesium in the Kroll process, a method invented by a scientist named William Kroll. It is called sponge because of its sponge-like appearance.
MARKET FLUCTATIONS
It is a common belief that cyclical fluctuations of titanium prices are mainly driven by demand-side events, especially aircraft demand cycles. Although this was an accurate assessment in the initial decades of titanium development, nowadays this is not always true. The prices per kilo of titanium mill products were relatively insensitive to the declining demand of commercial aircraft that happened since 2001. There were no particular modifications of Wholesale titanium deals whatsoever. This is a clear indicator that titanium prices are no longer solely based on aerospace demand, but rather on a mix of different industrial sectors that use titanium as a raw material.
Economic crisis has historically created fluctuations in the titanium prices per kilo, forcing major titanium suppliers in closing less profitable plants. This has led to periods of an abrupt correction of prices, driven mostly by the diminished supply. As a reaction of the higher price periods of this kind usually is followed by reopening of the shutdown capacities, finding a new level of stable and increasing demand giving a more stable price level for the following years.
