S

ometimes titanium is called a rare element, although among the contents of the earth’s crust it yields to only iron, aluminum and magnesium. Thanks to the unique combination of its physical and mechanical properties, such as strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, relatively low density, etc, this metal found a wide use in the aerospace and chemical industries, shipbuilding, production of car engines and components.
Industrially titanium was first used as a structural material in the mid-1990s. Prior to this period, the USSR was one of a few countries, where fundamental research studies in this respect were done and where efforts were made to work out industrial methods of producing titanium, to develop technologies of smelting, deformation, thermal treatment of titanium alloys and compositions. There were large enterprises built that started operating as a single production complex. Integrated mills in Zaporozhye (Ukraine), Berezniky (Perm region, Russia), Ust-Kamenogorsk (Kazakhstan) produced spongy titanium, which was processed into metallic ingots and billets at the enterprise VSMPO (Sverdlovsk region, Russia).
In the late 1980s VSMPO was making 70,000 tons of titanium products a year or 1.5 times more than the rest of the world. Today Russian consumers do not need such volumes of titanium. But, as before, the country possesses major reserves of this metal. Advanced technologies of extracting and processing titanium, many of which are considered a breakthrough, have been developed and are still being used. VSMPO supplies titanium products to 240 companies in 34 countries and occupies a considerable niche in the world market.
Russia has all the potential to not only retain its leading positions in titanium production but also to significantly enhance them since new areas of using this metal keep emerging. And it is not surprising. The very name Titanium rings with strength and reliability.