Titanium could be steel of the future
Reuters — May 23, 2005

NEW YORK, May 23: Titanium steel, already popular in wristwatches and golf clubs, may be the next top-selling industrial material, a Tata Sons executive forecast on Monday.

Titanium, a lightweight, high-strength metal could quickly grab market share from traditional steel over the next decade, said Jamshed Irani, a director of Tata Sons, the controlling shareholder of Tata Group, which owns a range of companies including Tata Steel Ltd.

"Titanium is a very expensive material right now, but I would put it in the same bracket that steel was 200 years ago," Irani said at the Reuters Manufacturing Summit here.

Titanium steel is 45 percent lighter than steel but much stronger and resistant to water and corrosion, which could make it popular in vehicles, construction and machine parts where traditional steel now dominates.

The ore used for titanium is also as abundant across the globe as iron ore, which allows for low-cost access to the material, Irani said.

However, titanium requires an expensive extraction process that makes the material about six times as expensive as stainless steel. Furthermore, titanium prices have risen sharply over the last year along with soaring steel prices.

"For all these reasons (titanium) should be replacing steel. But it is not, because somebody, somewhere has not yet found a cheap method of mass extraction of titanium," Irani said.

For now, the price of titanium makes it prohibitive for most manufacturers, and the metal is only used in products where the lightweight metal is essential like aircraft and tennis racquets, or for specialty items like jewelry and the curvy outer walls of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Companies like Tata, however, have been investing in research and development in the area, and Irani said it is only a matter of time before companies learn to extract titanium cheaply.

"A big bang event has not occurred. That will occur in the next 20 to 30 years," Irani said.