Where does titanium come from?

Among the seven largest traders in each line, China declares the lowest unit values for titanium ore imports and for pigment exports. In 2024 it took 27% of world ore and concentrate import value (HS 261400) but 45% of import weight, at $278 per tonne, below the $428 to $919 declared by the next six importers. It also exported titanium dioxide pigment (HS 320611) at $2,380 per tonne, below the $2,667 to $3,544 of the next six exporters (our arithmetic on CEPII BACI value and net weight). These customs codes do not break out titanium content or form, so a low unit value can reflect grade or mix as well as price.

Titanium ore is traded more widely than the metal. The three largest ore exporters (South Africa, Australia and Mozambique) made 49% of world ore export value in 2024, against 64% for the three largest exporters of unwrought titanium and powders (CEPII BACI, our arithmetic; the metal line covers more than sponge). The metal's top three, Japan, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia, are also the sources USGS names for US sponge metal, where US net import reliance is 100%. For mineral concentrates it was 88% in 2025 against 90% in 2021 (USGS MCS 2026, US only; see US import reliance).

The biggest ore exporter has comparatively little ilmenite left at its current pace. South Africa supplied 23% of world ore export value in 2024. Its ilmenite reserves of 28 million tonnes cover 21.5 years of its 2025 output, the shortest cover among the producers in the site's table (those with at least 2% of both output and reserves), against 218 years for Australia and 52.5 for the world. The world figure leaves out countries with no USGS reserve figure, so it is approximate (USGS MCS 2026, ilmenite only; our arithmetic; see country reserve life).

This page covers the titanium minerals, ilmenite and rutile, which are the ore end of the chain. In 2025 China mined 3.2 million tonnes of ilmenite, counted as contained titanium dioxide (TiO2), 34% of the world total of 9.4 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Mozambique followed with 20%, then South Africa (14%), Australia (8.3%) and Norway (4.1%). The top five account for 81%, and 11 countries mine it. That world figure is the sum of the countries USGS lists one by one; its own total adds an "other countries" line and is a little higher.

Rutile is the scarcer, richer mineral. Australia mined 44% of the world's 450,000 tonnes of rutile in 2025, with Sierra Leone at 24% and South Africa at 22%. Its producer list differs from the ilmenite list. The two minerals differ chemically: rutile is nearly pure TiO2, while ilmenite is an iron titanium oxide, FeTiO3, which is roughly half TiO2 by weight even when pure.

The deposits fall into two types. Heavy-mineral sands are coastal or river placers where weathering has left dense minerals behind: Kenmare's Moma mine in Mozambique, the Richards Bay and Tronox operations in South Africa, and the Australian and Sierra Leonean rutile mines are of this kind. Hard-rock ilmenite comes from igneous bodies, such as the Tellnes deposit in Norway and the Lac Tio deposit in Quebec, which Rio Tinto describes as the largest solid ilmenite deposit in the world. In China much of the ilmenite is recovered from the vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite deposits of the Panzhihua district in Sichuan.

Reserves of ilmenite stand at 493.9 million tonnes (2025), with Australia holding 34%, China 22% and Canada 10% (USGS MCS). Two cautions apply. USGS gives no reserve figure for Mozambique or Senegal, both large producers, so those shares are measured against an incomplete total. And USGS notes that the Australian reserve meeting the stricter JORC reporting code is well below the figure shown, so the ranking reflects differing definitions as well as geology.

Three different goods share the name titanium in trade, and their leading exporters differ completely. In 2024 South Africa was the largest exporter of titanium ore and concentrate (HS 261400) with 23% of world export value, ahead of Australia (13%), Mozambique (12%), Norway (6.8%) and Sierra Leone (5.5%), on world trade of $3.2 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 27%, followed by United States (14%), Japan (10%) and Belgium (7.3%). These are shares of value, not of tonnes, and rutile sells for much more per tonne than ilmenite, which is consistent with Australia ranking higher as an exporter than as an ilmenite miner. Titanium slag, a smelted upgrade of ilmenite, travels under a separate customs heading and is not in these figures.

Pigment is the second line. Titanium dioxide pigment (HS 320611) was a trade of $10.1 billion in 2024, larger than the ore trade, and China supplied 41% of it, ahead of United States (10%), Germany (7.3%) and Belgium (5.6%). The largest importer was India (11%). The European Commission imposed definitive anti-dumping duties on Chinese titanium dioxide in January 2025, so this is a line where trade policy bites. Such measures are reviewed periodically, so the Commission's trade-defence pages are the reference for the duty in force.

Metal is the third. Unwrought titanium and powders (HS 810820), the heading that covers sponge, were traded at $1.3 billion in 2024. Japan led exports with 34%, then Kazakhstan (16%), Saudi Arabia (14%) and United States (12%), and United States was the largest importer (36%). Mining, ore export, pigment export and metal export are four different league tables, and a country can lead one while barely appearing in another. See producing, exporting and processing for why that matters.

This page quotes no titanium mineral price, because there is no free public series and no exchange benchmark. The prices that exist are assessments and unit values: USGS takes its rutile and ilmenite prices from a commercial assessment service and a trade-tracking service, and for slag and imported ilmenite it falls back on customs unit values. Publishing a figure here would require a license this site does not hold.

What can be said is how the market works. The minerals are sold by grade, meaning the TiO2 content and the impurities, and price rises steeply with grade: rutile, slag and synthetic rutile fetch a multiple of the price of raw ilmenite per tonne, and USGS reports separate series for each.

Part of the market never meets an open price at all. Some pigment makers own their feedstock: Kronos reports that its Norwegian ilmenite mine supplied all the feedstock for its sulfate-process plants in 2025, and Tronox runs mines, smelters and pigment plants within one company. Pigment, sponge metal and mineral concentrate are each priced in their own markets for different grades, and a move in one does not transmit mechanically to the others.

Nearly all United States titanium mineral concentrate goes to pigment producers, according to USGS, and the pigment goes mainly into paint, plastics and paper. USGS describes consumption of the minerals as closely tied to pigment output, and demand for those end uses as related to gross domestic product.

China is the leading producer and consumer of titanium mineral concentrates, according to USGS, and it also imports heavily. In January to September 2025 Mozambique was the largest source of its imports of concentrates, ahead of Australia and Norway.

The sulfate pigment process can use ordinary ilmenite, while the chloride process needs richer feedstock such as rutile, synthetic rutile or slag. A plant's process determines what it can buy.

Sand mines are finite, and a closure removes a defined product. The Kwale mine in Kenya, which began production in 2013, ended mining in December 2024 when its ore was depleted, and USGS lists Kenyan rutile output in 2024 but none in 2025.

Turning ilmenite into slag or synthetic rutile needs smelting furnaces or leaching plants. Upgrading adds a processing step between the mine and the pigment or metal plant.

Pigment is the largest traded item in this chain and has been the subject of trade policy. The European Union's definitive anti-dumping duties on Chinese titanium dioxide, imposed in January 2025, apply to pigment from China; the Commission's trade-defence pages are the reference for the rate in force.

The metal takes only a small part of the ore, but sells for far more per tonne than pigment. USGS reports that the United States made no titanium sponge in 2025 and imported a record quantity, and world sponge output comes from a handful of producers, led by China.

Sand deposits are mined by dredge or dry excavation, and the sand is passed through wet concentrator plants that make a heavy-mineral concentrate. At Moma in Mozambique that concentrate contains ilmenite, rutile and zircon, which are then separated into products, using the differences in density, magnetism and electrical conductivity between the minerals. Hard-rock ilmenite, as at Tellnes in Norway, is mined from open pits, crushed, ground and separated into an ilmenite concentrate.

Ilmenite concentrate is often not the end of the mineral stage. It can be smelted with carbon in a furnace to give titanium slag, with a TiO2 content far above the ore's, plus pig iron as a by-product, which is how Rio Tinto's Quebec complex and Richards Bay Minerals operate. Or the iron can be leached out to leave synthetic rutile, with a TiO2 content above 90 percent. Both are premium feedstocks for the chloride pigment process and for metal.

Pigment is made in one of two ways. The sulfate process digests ilmenite in sulfuric acid, and the chloride process reacts feedstock with chlorine and carbon to make titanium tetrachloride, purifies it by distillation and burns it in oxygen to give pigment, recycling the chlorine. Kronos dates the first commercial pigment process to 1916, and DuPont developed the chloride route in the 1950s.

Metal starts from the same tetrachloride. In the Kroll process, which replaced the older Hunter process for almost all commercial production, liquid magnesium reduces the tetrachloride at 800 to 850 degrees Celsius in a sealed steel retort, leaving a porous titanium sponge that is purified and then melted in a vacuum arc furnace. The steps are batch operations. Everything on this page is expressed as contained TiO2, so tonnages of concentrate by gross weight will be larger.

Pigment takes nearly all of the ore. Titanium dioxide is the dominant white pigment because of the whiteness, brightness and opacity it gives. USGS lists paints, including lacquers and varnishes, as the leading use, followed by plastics and paper, with smaller uses in catalysts, ceramics, coated fabrics, floor coverings, printing ink and roofing granules. In the United States the remainder goes to welding-rod coatings, carbides, chemicals and titanium metal.

The metal is the high-value end. Titanium has a strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance that few materials match, and USGS reports that in the United States most of it goes into aerospace, with armor, chemical processing, marine hardware, medical implants and power generation making up the rest.

Substitution is possible at the edges. Ground calcium carbonate, precipitated calcium carbonate, kaolin and talc compete with titanium dioxide as white pigments, although they do not match its opacity. For the metal, aluminum, composites, intermetallics, steel and superalloys compete in high-strength uses, and nickel, specialty steels and zirconium alloys can replace it where corrosion resistance is the need. USGS reports no recycling of titanium minerals.

The chain runs from mineral sands or hard-rock ilmenite, through concentrate and upgrading to slag or synthetic rutile, to pigment or sponge, and the concentration rises as it moves downstream. Mining is spread across several continents, with the top three ilmenite producers accounting for 68% of world output. Pigment and metal are more concentrated. USGS puts the bulk of world pigment capacity in China, and its sponge table shows production in China, Japan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia, with none reported in the United States in 2025.

This is where the critical-mineral angle is real. The European Union lists titanium metal as both critical and strategic under the Critical Raw Materials Act of 2024, and the 2025 United States critical minerals list names titanium. Those listings refer mainly to metal for aerospace and defense, which is a small use of ore, so this page covers the ore end of that chain. The dependence they describe sits at sponge and downstream, not at the mine: the United States relies on imported concentrate and imported sponge while remaining a net exporter of pigment. See critical minerals and the glossary entry on a critical mineral for how the lists differ.

The material is bulk and moves in shiploads, such as the Lac Tio ore that Rio Tinto ships 880 km by boat to its Sorel-Tracy complex. Smelting produces pig iron alongside slag, so the economics of titanium upgrading are tied to those of iron ore and steel.

The vulnerability is therefore of grade and location, not of quantity. Reserves are large compared with annual mining, USGS reports world resources of several times the reserves, and no part of that supports a claim of shortage. The step that needs specialised plant is converting ore into the grades that the chloride pigment process and the metal industry need.