Grade 2 Titanium Prices October 12, 2026

The second week of the post-holiday session delivered a textbook signal. Sponge 0# fell a further RMB 1,000–2,000/tonne. The full GR2 mill-product ladder - 6 mm hot-rolled plate, 0.5 mm cold-rolled plate, Φ 20–40 mm bar, OD 6–114 mm welded tube, 0.3 mm strip, 0.07 mm foil - printed identical numbers to the week before. The conversion margin explains it.

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Compiled from published spot assessments for the week ending October 10, 2026. CNY levels ex-works China. USD conversions use the prevailing weekly reference rate of approximately ¥6.73/USD. Foil and strip levels reflect small-volume specialty pricing and are not comparable with plate on a per-tonne basis.

Across the second week of October, sponge 0# drifted from RMB 44,000–45,000 to RMB 43,000–44,000, and every published GR2 mill-product line - 6 mm hot-rolled plate, 0.5 mm cold-rolled plate, Φ 20–40 mm bar, OD 6–114 mm welded tube, 0.3 mm strip, 0.07 mm foil - printed the same numbers as the week before. The reason is mechanical, not psychological. The sponge move and the mill-product move have decoupled in real time.

Walk a 6 mm hot-rolled GR2 plate at ¥77/kg back to its input. The sponge inside is 0.97 kg of grade 0# or 1# material - call it ¥44/kg. Melting, ingot casting and hot rolling add another ¥33/kg of conversion cost, of which roughly ¥15/kg is energy and labour and ¥18/kg is fixed-cost recovery (depreciation, pickling, lab testing, certification, finance cost on working capital). When sponge drops ¥1,500/tonne - ¥1.5/kg on a per-tonne basis, ¥1.45/kg per kg of finished plate - the ¥18/kg of fixed-cost recovery does not move. The maximum theoretical downward pass-through is about ¥1.5/kg on a finished plate whose conversion margin is ¥33/kg. That is 5% of the conversion line, 2% of the finished price, and too small to be worth re-quoting. The cost floor below sponge is sticky too: magnesium at ¥15,750/t, high-titanium slag at ¥5,100/t, and ferro-titanium at ¥26,750/t all held flat; rutile R-996 ex-works actually went up ¥300/t. The export bid is still holding the headline: August sponge exports reached 708.4 tonnes, up 32.2% year on year and a five-month high, and overseas buyers continue to take volume at $6,800/tonne FOB. Without that bid, sponge 0# would already be at ¥40,000.

Six millimetre hot-rolled GR2 plate is ¥77/kg. Half-millimetre cold-rolled GR2 plate is ¥170/kg. The two share chemistry, mill, and standard - only the rolling schedule changes - and the spread between them is ¥93/kg. That is larger than the entire value of the metal in the 6 mm plate, and it is also larger than the entire value of the metal in the 0.5 mm plate (¥44/kg of sponge). The thin end of the ladder is not a metal price negotiation; it is a capacity reservation.

What produces the spread? Two mechanisms. Yield. Rolling 6 mm down to 0.5 mm consumes more passes, more annealing cycles and more pickling, and each pass carries scrap and edge-trim loss. Material yield from ingot to 0.5 mm coil is around 55–60%, versus 80–85% for 6 mm plate. Capacity scarcity. Thin-gauge cold rolling lines are the constrained asset in the industry - fewer exist, they run slower, and every buyer wants them. The same mill that produces 6 mm plate at full line speed can produce a fraction of that tonnage in 0.5 mm coil. The constrained resource is line hours, not metal.

Need a thin-gauge GR2 sheet, strip, coil or foil quote? For 0.3–1.5 mm cold-rolled and foil, price is set by line availability. Send your annual volume and we will quote on a capacity-reserved basis.

Chemical process equipment, plate and shell (ASTM B265). Buy at the thick end of the ladder wherever the stress calculation allows. Six millimetre hot-rolled at ¥77/kg is the value point in this market; each step down the ladder costs disproportionately. If the application is corrosion resistance and containment rather than structural, question any specification below 2 mm.

Thin-gauge sheet, strip, coil and foil. The segment with the least negotiating room and the longest lead times. If your 2027 programme is known, reserve thin-gauge rolling capacity now - the constraint is line availability, not price. Where a 0.5 mm specification is driven by habit rather than requirement, re-qualify upward to 1.0–1.5 mm.

Medical, marine, certified and project-package buyers. Certified GR2 (ISO 5832-2) carries a 30–50% premium over commercial with 8–12 week lead times - lock the audit trail before the price. Marine, desalination and offshore plate-and-tube packages are flat at published levels; tender 50–500 tonnes with a fixed-price element rather than buying against spot. Newly qualified domestic tube supply improves the negotiating position on project packages through Q4.

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