China's annual consumption of titanium raw materials accounts for more than 45% of the global total demand, plus the previously mentioned sponge titanium production accounts for one third of the world, and titanium dioxide production accounts for 45% of the world. It can be said that China has now become a global titanium The most important part of the industry. The quality of China's titanium market and the progress of China's titanium industry development will all have an important impact on the global titanium industry. In recent years, some new policies and market changes have continuously affected the Chinese titanium industry. Faced with these effects, Chinese companies are constantly making adjustments. The factor that has affected the market the most in recent years is the pressure brought by environmental protection policies. Since 2016, the Chinese government has strengthened environmental protection inspections and no longer tolerates illegal emissions by enterprises. This makes each enterprise must increase investment in environmental protection equipment. For some small and medium-sized enterprises, the funding threshold for improving environmental protection equipment has exceeded the affordability of the enterprise, causing some small and medium-sized enterprises to suspend production and exit the market. In addition, some companies have limited treatment capacity for waste. In order to ensure compliance with emissions, these companies have to reduce their output so that the output of waste matches the treatment capacity. In order to reduce waste production, some companies have also selected higher quality raw materials, but this has also pushed up their production costs.
During the rapid development of China's titanium industry, there have also been some problems. First, the domestic titanium ore output growth is relatively slow, resulting in a gradual increase in dependence on imported ore. China's titanium ore self-sufficiency rate reached 67%, the highest point in 2014, but has now fallen to 58%. Secondly, while the demand for imported titanium ore has grown, fluctuations have occurred in some major import source countries, which has caused some downstream companies to have no stable supply of raw materials, which has affected production. The instability of raw material supply has adversely affected the product quality and production costs of titanium dioxide enterprises. In addition, the quality of imported titanium ore has been declining in recent years. Among them, the decrease in TiO2 content has led to a decrease in the production efficiency of titanium dioxide enterprises, and at the same time has brought more waste production. After 2016, China's environmental protection requirements have been significantly strengthened, and the increase in waste has caused huge pressure on titanium dioxide enterprises. Some regions have reduced production or temporarily suspended production due to emissions issues. The decrease in TiO2 content is generally accompanied by an increase in the content of impurity elements, which also affects the quality of downstream products. Downstream companies need to invest more in production to eliminate the impact.
With the rapid increase of China's demand for titanium raw materials, more and more enterprises have begun to invest in mining overseas. At present, Africa is the region with the most concentrated investment by Chinese enterprises, and Australia is also a non-ideal investment place. There are some relatively ideal titanium mine projects under development around Perth. We also hope to see more successful cases of cooperating with Chinese companies and achieving win-win results. In China, due to the huge demand caused by the future chlorination project, some companies are developing new technologies to allow more low-grade titanium ore to meet the requirements for the production of chlorinated titanium dioxide after processing, thereby increasing the low-grade titanium ore. the value of. If such technology is successfully industrialized, it will solve the raw material dilemma facing China. So far, China's demand for titanium raw materials is dominated by sulphate titanite, but the future growth point will be chlorinated titanite, rutile and other raw materials. China's domestic titanium ore components cannot be used as raw materials for the chlorination process, and almost all rely on imports. This is also the fundamental reason for China's efforts to develop new technologies that change the applicability of titanium ore. Before the emergence of new technologies, China's huge demand for chlorinated raw materials in the future will inevitably further increase its prices.
