Titanium production

South Yorkshire-based Metalysis is leading a £1.8m effort to develop mass production methods for high-purity titanium.

The company, which develops technology for the speciality metals industry, has secured an £862,000 grant from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to scale up its technology for the production of titanium powders.

Metalysis owns the global IP and commercial exploitation rights to the process, known as FFC.

The company’s partners in the effort include Newcastle University, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at Sheffield University and TWI.

This public- and private-sector collaboration will design, develop and commission Metalysis’s semi-continuous production plant to provide a consistent high-purity product at a commercially viable price. The plant is due to be commissioned within eight months, after which powder consolidation and characterisation trials will commence on the titanium produced. The entire project will last for two years.

Mark Bertolini, chief executive of Metalysis, said: ‘This project is a landmark on the road to us, introducing a truly disruptive technology into the £1bn-plus global market for the production of high-purity titanium.’