Tauranga investors sit on billion-dollar powderkeg

IT WAS a proud moment for Tauranga engineering boss Ian Macrae. Twelve years ago he invested in a Waikato University research project to find a process for developing titanium alloy powder.
"It was supposed to be a 12-week project. After 10 years we had our first patent and now 12 years later we are into our fourth patent," said Mr Macrae.
He was speaking at the official opening of the Titanium Industry Development Association (TiDA), a group prepared to take the technology to a new level by encouraging companies to produce high-value products based on powder metallurgy.
"We are going to see exponential growth from now on," says Mr Macrae, chairman of TiDA, managing director of Titanox Development and owner of leading Tauranga engineering firm, Page and Macrae.
"It's fantastic. The development exceeded my expectation.
"We were looking at getting the powder up and running, and finding markets for it overseas. Now, we are developing our own industry around it." he said.
Titanox and Waikato University's Professor Deliang Zhang found a way of removing oxygen from titanium and other metal oxides in one process.
Titanox will be supplying the titanium alloy powder to local manufacturing companies and to TiDA for further research and development.
The alloy powder - it can be as pure as the client wants - produces products for industries such as aerospace, medical and automotive, that are lighter, stronger and more corrosive-resistant than stainless steel and other competitive materials.
The powder costs anything between $500-$1000/kg.
Titanox established a production plant in Newton St, Mount Maunganui, a year ago and is producing 30kg a day.
The firm has been fielding inquiries from Europe for orders ranging from 10-1000kg, with the latter order worth up to $1 million.
Companies such as Boeing have also shown strong interest and some of its executives have visited Tauranga. But Titanox is treading carefully. "It's still early days as we are optimising the production process," says Mr Macrae.
Titanox's next step is to move into continuous production requiring further investment of between $50-$100 million.
"We have investors waiting now to become involved and the potential is to produce 1 tonne of powder a day," Mr Macrae says.
"We know that by putting all the technology together it's feasible, but there's a lot of logistics involved.
"We would have to buy a 4ha property and have a processing machine that is 100m long. And why shouldn't we have that in Tauranga," he says.
Titanox has drawn up plans to supply 200 tonnes a year - which is up to 25 per cent of the present world titanium alloy powder market.
By then, the Western Bay will no doubt be hosting a new billion-dollar industry.
Titanox's first customer is award-winning Katikati dental solutions company, Triodent Innovations.
 It has installed a computer-operated laser sintering (milling) machine that makes sophisticated titanium products.
Within two months, Triodent will start producing handles for dental instruments.
"It makes the instruments super lightweight and comfortable to use," says Triodent founder, Dr Simon McDonald.
The company is also working on a dental implant made from titanium alloy powder.
"There's so much scope with it," he says.