China's annual consumption of titanium raw materials accounts for more than 45% of the total global demand. In addition, the previously mentioned production of sponge titanium accounts for one third of the world, and the production of titanium dioxide accounts for 45% of the world. It can be said that China has become the most important part of the global titanium industry. The quality of China's titanium market and the development progress of China's titanium industry will have an important impact on the global titanium industry. In recent years, some new policies and market changes have a continuous impact on China's titanium industry. Faced with these impacts, Chinese enterprises are also constantly making adjustments. In recent years, the most influential factor on the market is the pressure brought by environmental protection policies.
China's titanium industry has also shown some problems in the process of rapid development. First, the growth of domestic titanium ore production is relatively slow, resulting in a gradual increase in dependence on imported ores. China's titanium self-sufficiency rate reached 67% of the highest point in 2014, but has now dropped to 58%. Secondly, while the demand for imported titanium ore increased, some major import source countries fluctuated, resulting in some downstream enterprises having no stable supply of raw materials, which had an impact on production. The instability of raw material supply has an adverse impact on the product quality and production cost of titanium dioxide enterprises. In addition, the quality of imported titanium ore has been declining in recent years. Among them, the decrease of TiO2 content leads to the decline of production efficiency of titanium dioxide enterprises, and also brings more waste output. After 2016, China's environmental protection requirements have been significantly strengthened, and the increase of waste has put great pressure on titanium dioxide enterprises. Enterprises in some regions have reduced production or temporarily stopped production due to emission problems. The decrease of TiO2 content is generally accompanied by the increase of impurity element content, which also affects the quality of downstream products. Downstream enterprises need to invest more costs in production to eliminate the impact.
With the rapid increase of China's demand for titanium raw materials, more and more enterprises begin to invest in mines overseas. At present, Africa is the region with the most concentrated investment by Chinese enterprises, and Australia is also an ideal investment place. Some ideal titanium projects are under development around pas. We also hope to see more successful cases of cooperation with Chinese enterprises and win-win results. In China, due to the huge demand caused by future chlorination projects, some enterprises are developing new technologies so that more low-grade titanium ores can meet the requirements of chlorination titanium dioxide production after treatment, so as to improve the value of low-grade titanium ores. If such technology is successfully industrialized, it will solve the raw material dilemma faced by China. So far, China's demand for titanium raw materials is mainly sulfuric acid titanium ore, but the future growth point will be chlorinated titanium ore, rutile and other raw materials. China's domestic titanium ore components can not be used as raw materials for the chlorination process, and almost all rely on imports, which is also the fundamental reason for China's efforts to develop new technologies to change the applicability of titanium ore. Before the emergence of new technologies, China's huge demand for chlorination raw materials in the future is bound to further push up its price.
