On September 1, 2026, the results of the 2026 China Metallurgical Science and Technology Award selection were officially announced. The "Steel-Titanium Parallel Short Process Technology for the Production of High-Quality Series Titanium Sheets and Strips and Its Application" project, jointly completed by 10 domestic units, won the Special Prize of this year's Metallurgical Science and Technology Award - this is also the highest science and technology award in China's metallurgical industry.
For the titanium industry, this is far more than just an ordinary award-winning event. It marks that the three major pain points that have plagued the domestic titanium sheet and strip industry for decades - "high cost, lack of specifications, and reliance on imports" - have achieved a systematic breakthrough for the first time through the reconfiguration of the entire process chain, and will directly rewrite the cost structure, application boundaries and production capacity layout of titanium materials in the coming years.
Process Breakthrough: Transforming "Multiple Forgings" Directly into "One Fire, One Pass Continuous Rolling"
It is well known in the industry that the traditional production path for titanium sheet strips has always followed a long process route of "more than two VAR smelting + multiple firings and multiple passes of forging + multiple passes of rolling". This process chain is long, energy consumption is high, and the material utilization rate is low, ultimately pushing up the cost of end products. The most core disruption of the "Steel-Titanium Parallel Line" project is the invention of the titanium sheet strip one-fire, one-pass, non-forge direct rolling process, which directly skips the lengthy forging stage in the traditional path and relies on the existing mature steel production lines to complete the continuous production of titanium sheet strips.
The changes brought about by this technological innovation are substantial:
The overall production process and comprehensive production cost have both decreased by more than 20%, based on the traditional long-process titanium sheet strip production method.
Through innovations in the structure design of "one furnace, two ingots" and other electron beam cold bed furnaces, production efficiency and capacity have further increased by 30%, and manufacturing costs have further decreased by 10%.
Ultimately, 4400mm ultra-wide titanium alloy thick and thin plates, 2.5mm thin specification wide-width hot rolled coils, 1.5m wide strip rolls, and 0.1mm extremely thin strips have achieved stable production of all specifications.
The technical breakthroughs in support include the electron beam cold bed furnace melting process for high homogeneity large-scale ingots, the development of an accurate 98% five-element titanium alloy element volatilization rate precise prediction model, and the green recycling technology with a return material addition ratio of over 65%, with the return material ratio reaching 100% in some scenarios. In some cases, the return material ratio can even reach 100%, further reducing costs at the raw material level. Currently, the full series of titanium sheet strip products developed in this project have superior process stability and mechanical properties to traditional processes, and the product specifications and grade coverage have exceeded those of advanced foreign enterprises.
After the cost has dropped, titanium materials are opening up new market boundaries
Titanium alloys have long been referred to as "luxury materials" in the industry. The core bottleneck has never been the performance, but rather the extremely high manufacturing costs. In the past, many civilian fields that matched in terms of performance were unable to achieve large-scale popularization due to the unaffordable price of titanium materials. This time, a 20% systematic cost reduction, combined with full specification coverage capabilities, is equivalent to directly raising the application ceiling of titanium plate products by one level.
The most direct impact is the acceleration of the domestic substitution process. Previously, China's high-end titanium plate strips have long relied on imports, and some ultra-wide and extremely thin specification products were almost completely monopolized by overseas manufacturers. Now, with the stable production capacity of full specifications in place, it means that the material supply chain for key fields such as aerospace, marine engineering, and national defense and military industries is now controllable independently. For the first time, it has a complete production capacity and process base as the core support.
What is more worthy of industry attention is the incremental space in the civilian market. Recently, clear signals have emerged in the consumer electronics sector that leading mobile phone manufacturers will widely use titanium alloy frames and hinge structures in the new generation of foldable screen products. The annual production target for a single product has been raised to tens of millions. In the past, titanium materials were only used in small-scale trials in flagship models due to cost limitations; now, with the cost reduction of plate strips, it is fully capable of penetrating the more popular 3C electronics, new energy vehicles, medical devices, and civilian consumer goods markets, forming another 100,000-ton new market segment after aerospace.
Behind the "steel-titanium linkage" lies a profound transformation in the logic of production capacity
The uniqueness of this project lies in the fact that it is not a single technological breakthrough by a titanium enterprise, but a systematic innovation jointly accomplished by steel enterprises, research institutions, and downstream users. This "titanium material technology + steel production line + collaborative research and development" combination model provides the entire industry with a completely different path for capacity expansion.
In the past, when titanium enterprises needed to expand their titanium sheet production, they often had to invest heavily to build dedicated forging, hot rolling, and cold rolling full-process production lines, with extremely high capital requirements. However, the "steel-titanium linkage" model directly revitalized the existing rolled production capacity in the steel industry, achieving large-scale production of titanium sheet bands through cross-industry collaboration, significantly reducing the investment risks of new capacity. For a large number of domestic enterprises with mature steel rolling equipment, this is equivalent to opening up a new business curve. Without having to build the entire titanium material chain from scratch, they can enter the high-end titanium sheet band market.
With the full industrialization implementation of this technology, the effective supply capacity of titanium sheet bands in China will rapidly increase. The past capacity barriers established based on traditional long processes will also be redefined under the new cost curve.
Not only did it win a technical award, but it also sent out a clear signal for industry transformation
This project was successively included in the National Key Research and Development Program and the National Science and Technology Major Project, with cumulative R&D investment exceeding 200 million yuan. What was ultimately implemented was not just a cost reduction process, but a complete chain solution that takes into account national strategies, industrial security, and green manufacturing.
The design of high proportion of returned material recycling in the project fully aligns with the current development direction of green and low-carbon manufacturing in the manufacturing industry. It also provides a replicable path for the titanium industry to solve waste recycling and reduce reliance on primary titanium. The special award for the Metallurgical Science and Technology Prize also indicates that this short process technical route has received national-level recognition. Subsequent policies, capital, and industrial resources will further tilt towards this direction.
This time, the competition for titanium sheet strips is no longer a comparison of single equipment and single products, but a comprehensive contest of the entire process process system, cost control capabilities, and the speed of new scenario expansion - this is also a landmark turning point for domestic titanium materials to move from "able to produce" to "low-cost stable mass production".
Baoji Yibaite New Materials Technology Co., Ltd.
- the best manufacturer and supplier of titanium alloy sheets and strips in Baoji, China
Address: No.10 Plant, No.3 Phoenix Road, High-tech Development Zone, Baoji City, Shaanxi Province, China.
E-mail Address: nancy@yibaite.com.cn
Tel: 0086-18291761837