Rethinking Titanium Manufacturing: From Swarf to Finished Part
Europe’s aerospace and defense sectors run on titanium — but most of it still arrives as imported primary metal, melted at enormous energy cost. The EMPowerMet project (Electric & Mechanical Power for Metal Manufacturing) is working to change that.
A Horizon Europe Innovation Action bringing together 15 consortium partners across 7 countries, EMPowerMet is building a fully circular, energy-efficient value chain for titanium — one that starts not with ore, but with swarf and end-of-life components.
At the core of the project is solid-state recycling: technologies like FAST and CONFORM™ convert titanium feedstock directly into sheets and wires without melting the material. That’s a fundamentally different route than conventional remelting — lower energy input, less material loss, and a shorter path from scrap to structural-grade product.
The process, in five steps:
- Collection of titanium swarf and end-of-life parts
- Solid-state recycling via FAST and CONFORM™
- Production of high-performance sheets, plates, rods and wires
- Hybrid manufacturing — deep drawing, wire-arc directed energy deposition, and inductive heat treatment
- Validation through three industrial demonstrators at TRL7
Those demonstrators span real aerospace and safety applications: a fire protective helmet shell deep-drawn from recycled titanium sheet, space landing gear structures built from recycled Ti-5553, and an aeroplane service port panel combining wire-arc DED with inductive stress relief.
Over its 36-month programme, EMPowerMet is a strong signal of where the titanium circular economy is heading — and a reminder that Europe’s path to a sustainable titanium supply doesn’t have to run back through primary smelting. Worth following for anyone working in recycled titanium aerospace applications.
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