Metalysis wins £862K grant to scale-up titanium powders production

Grant

A consortium led by Metalysis Ltd has won a £862,000 grant from the UK government’s Technology Strategy Board. The grant, made on a matched-funding basis, will enable Metalysis to continue to scale up its technology for the production of titanium powders. The other members of the consortium are Newcastle University, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre at Sheffield University and the research organisation TWI.

The company is commercialising the Fray-Farthing-Chen Cambridge Process for the low-cost production of high value metals and alloys, which was discovered at Cambridge University.

The collaboration will design, develop and commission a 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 project will last two years.

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

The new plant will produce titanium that can be sold as either powder or in sheet form, increasing efficiency of use for this finite resource. In the case of aerospace, for example, the fabrication yield from titanium can be enhanced from the current 10 per cent level to as much as 90 per cent in some cases.

“Metalysis will be in an even better position to prove the commercial quality of its products, as well as the process costs, at a level that can be converted easily and reliably to full-scale production. This opens up a new route to manufacturing titanium powder which can be directly consolidated into sheet products while delivering massive reductions in capital and operational expenditures, as well as very substantial environmental benefits,” Bertolini said.

A typical integrated 5,000 tonne per year titanium production plant using the traditional multi-stage Kroll process requires capital expenditure of £400 million or more. A plant based on the Metalysis process will cost in the region of £50 million and is expected to have half the carbon footprint of the traditional process.

Rotherham-based Metalysis plans to enter the titanium market in niche applications to gain production experience and market knowledge. Its technology will then be further developed and scaled up, in collaboration with a major industrial partner, to compete in volume markets.  

The Technology Strategy Board grant follows the conclusion of a £5.1 million funding round in May 2009 in which all of the company’s existing venture capital stakeholders reinvested. During the last five years and prior to the latest grant, Metalysis has raised £19 million in venture capital and a further £4 million in grants.