Tight Rolled Titanium Supply to Keep Another 2 Years in Japan

Rolled titanium supply is expected to keep tight at least for 2 years in Japan. Japanese users are likely to import limited volume from China due to the quality gap with Japanese products. The domestic tight supply could continue until domestic major sponge titanium makers start the new capacity operations after mid-2009. The supply keeps tight since the demand recovered for airplane, plant and heat exchanger 2 years ago. The rolled products’ lead time is averaged 8 months and some new buyers have to wait for 1 year compared with normal 2-3 months lead time. The dealers and processors wait the arrival to ship for the customers. Some major dealers, which try to secure 8 months of stock to keep the just in time delivery, are suffered from higher cost for inventory. China was expected to help the supply balance. The country increased the rolled titanium output by 40% to 13,879 tonnes in 2006 from 2005. China is expected to keep the high rate output increase until 2010 and could meet growing world demand. Japanese buyers imported sample from China to check the quality. However, many of them said the quality is much lower in surface finishing and other aspects than Japanese products. The import is likely not to be used for sheet, welded pipe and heat exchanger. Sumitomo Titanium will start the shipment from new plant with annual 14,000 tonnes of output capacity. Toho Titanium starts the operation for new plant with 12,000 tonnes of capacity in Yawata works of Nippon Steel. The domestic tight supply could continue until the new capacities serve the market.