The Fayetteville city council has approved an incentive scheme that would see significant tax rebates for titanium industry development within the city boundaries.

In order to attract and stimulate the development of titanium projects within the city, the Fayetteville city council has greenlit a titanium incentive scheme known as Project Aero. This comes after the Cumberland county’s Board of Commissioners consented to a similar programme earlier in May. The county aims to attract several titanium projects, with American Titanium Metal (ATM) currently showing an interest to construct a titanium recycling plant in Fayetteville. The council voted 9-1 to approve the proposed incentives package, which will see ATM potentially receive significant tax rebates, should the company choose Fayetteville for its plant location. The proposed plant will use approximately 75% recycled titanium along with titanium sponge to produce titanium metal with a low carbon footprint. 

Titanium metal demand is set to grow from 166kt in 2023 to more than 260kt by 2034, which represents an increase of roughly 60% of the 2023 volume. Titanium’s use in the aerospace industry makes it an important material for both commercial aviation and defense applications. Following the closure of the US’ last sponge plant in 2020, the US has also become reliant on the import of titanium sponge feedstocks. For these reasons, the US has classified titanium as a critical material and has implemented several programmes to focus on growing domestic titanium production. This is particularly relevant owing to the global reliance on aerospace grade Russian titanium sponge feedstocks, and politcal pressures to find alternative sources of titanium. Given this, Fayetteville and Cumberland County’s Project Aero may represent an important initiative to restore domestic titanium production to the US as well as introduce a low carbon footprint titanium product into the US supply chain.