r/investing Mar 7, 02:54 PM
A DD on the Only U.S. Company Building a Domestic Titanium Supply Chain Not financial advice. I hold a position in IPX. Pre-revenue company with significant execution risk. Do your own due diligence.
Overview
Russia and China together control approximately 70% of the world's titanium sponge production. The United States imports roughly 95% of its titanium, with the primary import source being Japan, a country that has no titanium mines of its own and is itself dependent on upstream feedstock from Russia and Ukraine, both severely disrupted since 2022. Russia's largest titanium producer, VSMPO-AVISMA, is owned by a Putin oligarch and state defense corporation Rostec and is under sanction. China has already demonstrated willingness to weaponize critical mineral exports, imposing controls on gallium, germanium, antimony, and graphite.
Every fighter jet, naval vessel, missile, and satellite the U.S. military operates contains significant amounts of titanium. There is no substitutable material that replicates titanium's combination of strength, lightness, and heat resistance. The U.S. currently has essentially zero primary domestic titanium production capacity.
IperionX (NASDAQ: IPX / ASX: IPX) is the only company currently building that capacity on U.S. soil. They have a commissioned manufacturing plant in Virginia, the largest permitted titanium mineral resource in the United States in Tennessee, approximately $309M in committed U.S. government funding, and a financial report expected to be published soon.
The company is pre-revenue.
The Policy Context
U.S. titanium import dependency has been formally identified as a national security vulnerability by two consecutive administrations:
2017: President Trump issued Executive Order 13817 directing federal agencies to address critical mineral supply chain vulnerabilities
2021: President Biden issued Executive Order 14017, which led to a formal review concluding that reliance on foreign sources for critical minerals including titanium posed risks to national and economic security
February 2026: President Trump announced Project Vault, a $10 billion U.S. Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve, and hosted a 54-country Critical Minerals Ministerial in Washington
Current Congress: The bipartisan PRIMED Act (Slotkin/Ernst) has been introduced to reduce permitting timelines for domestic critical mineral production. A bipartisan group of senators has proposed a new $2.5 billion agency for domestic rare earth and critical mineral production
The Technology
IperionX has two patented technologies, HAMR (Hydrogen Assisted Metallothermic Reduction) and HSPT (Hydrogen Sintering and Phase Transformation), both of which replace the Kroll process that has been the standard titanium production method since the 1940s.
A key distinction that most coverage misses: HAMR works from either recycled titanium scrap or raw titanium mineral concentrates as feedstock. The Kroll process (the process currently being used) requires titanium sponge, an intermediate product produced primarily i