Toho Titanium Officially Announces Additional EB Furnace in Yahata

Toho Titanium officially announced on Wednesday the firm raises its titanium ingot production capacity. The firm will construct an additional EB (electron beam) furnace on the site adjacent to Yahata plant in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka, Japan for approximately 5.3 billion yen. The construction will start in April 2012. The operation commencement is scheduled in October 2013. Toho Titanium’s ingot output capacity will increase by 75% to 28,000 tonnes per year. The firm aims to follow the global demand growth by the capacity expansion.

Toho Titanium’s president Takeshi Kurushima had revealed the plan to introduce an additional EB furnace at a press conference in June 2011. Output capacity of the newly installed EB furnace is 12,000 tonnes per year. The new EB furnace enables commercial production of DC (direct-cast) slab, which was developed cooperatively by Toho Titanium and Nippon Steel. The furnace is also available to utilize titanium scrap. Moreover, the EB furnace adopts double-strand method to cast multiple slabs concurrently. The firm covers 5.3 billion yen of the capital expenditure by self fund and loan.

Toho Titanium has a VAR (vacuum arc remelting) furnace at Chigasaki plant in Kanagawa, Japan while the firm operates EB furnaces at Hitachi plant in Ibaraki, Japan and Yahata plant. EB furnace can use larger volume of titanium scrap as raw material than VAR furnace. Production capacity of these three plants totals approximately 16,000 tonnes per year. The capacity will reach 28,000 tonnes per year with an additional EB furnace.