A little-known Charlotte-based startup is suddenly getting lots of notice after signing a sizable contract with Ford Motor Co.
Titanium metal processing startup IperionX Limited said it expects the contract with Ford for manufactured metal components to generate $11 million in annual revenue. Ford is the second-largest U.S. automaker.
IperionX shares climbed about 2% today and have gained 114% this year.
The contract to supply Ford with titanium metal powder and manufacturing components runs for 45 months, starting in 2025, according to a securities filing. It represents IperionX’s effort to crack the estimated $4 billion global titanium market.
China and Russia control roughly 70% of the global titanium supply chain, IperionX told an analysts’ conference last month. Due to its high strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance, titanium has potential as a substitute for higher-carbon metals, especially the estimated $165 billion global market for aluminum and $200 billion market for stainless steel.
IperionX aims to produce high-performance titanium alloys from titanium minerals or scrap titanium. Using patented metal technologies in its processing, the company said it intends to reduce energy usage, costs and carbon emissions in supplying titanium to advanced U.S. industries. Those include consumer electronics, space, aerospace, defense, hydrogen, electric vehicles and additive manufacturing.
IperionX was formerly known as Hyperion Metals Limited and changed its name to IperionX Limited in February 2022. The company was incorporated in western Australia in 2017.
IperionX’s CEO is Australian investor Taso Arima, who helped start another Charlotte area mining company. Belmont-based Piedmont Lithium is a processor of lithium hydroxide that wants to open a lithium mine in Gaston County. Those plans have slowed because of a global oversupply and slower-than-expected demand for the electric vehicles that rely on lithium-ion batteries. Shares of Piedmont and other lithium producers have sunk because of those trends.
“Our plan is to re-shore a low cost, sustainable, U.S. titanium supply chain,’’ IperionX told analysts last month. “Our technologies have been proven with over 18-plus months of industrialized pilot scale production in Utah. Large scale production begins in Virginia during 2024 with 100% titanium metal scrap feedstock.”
Aside from its sites in West Valley City, Utah, and South Boston, Virginia, IperionX owns about 11,000 acres near Camden, Tennessee, about 100 miles west of Nashville. The location of the so-called Titan Project is one of the largest U.S. titanium, zircon and rare-earth mineral resources, the company said.
In a securities filing last month, IperiodX said it commissioned the furnace on its Virginia’s manufacturing campus. The step “represents a key technological milestone” toward the company’s goal of achieving full production capacity in the location by year end.
IperionX has traded between $7.20 and $19.99 in the past year. It traded late Tuesday afternoon at about $19.85. It has a market cap of about $505 million. By comparison, Piedmont Lithium’s market cap is about $168 million after its shares declined about 77% over the past year.
