SMALL CAP IDEA: Empire Metals flies the flag for neglected titanium

It is time to make titanium headline news, that’s pretty much the message from Empire Metal’s CEO Shaun Bunn.

If I ask you to name a strategic mineral, the chances are you’ll first say lithium, and after a few more guesses, perhaps you’ll have a go at pronouncing a rare earth element – probably one that looks like it was spelled by pouring out the dregs of a Scrabble sack.

And, for sure, those have been the trendy investment plays in recent years.

Lithium, rare earths and the so-called battery metals are all seen as future-focused minerals essential for new and advancing technologies. They’re in tight supply, enjoy excess demand, and are often the subject of geopolitical attentions.

But all that is true of titanium as well.

Shaun Bunn, Empire’s managing director, reckons the investment case for titanium is more than compelling.

And, given that Empire is sitting on the world’s largest titanium discovery, it’s fair to say he’s an expert on the matter.

‘With titanium, you’ve got an industry that is far bigger than the lithium industry, far bigger than rare earths, and far bigger than a lot of these more volatile industries that have been in the spotlight the past few years.

‘Everyone was excited, for instance, about surging lithium prices, buoyed by bold statements from well-known market commentators, and then next minute lithium goes into oversupply and the price collapses.’

‘Titanium doesn’t work like that. It’s been around for a hundred years,’ Bunn added.

China dominates titanium metal supply, whilst American industry – aerospace, in particular – are among the largest end users.

Around 60 per cent of the metal market is Chinese supplied, followed by Russian and Japanese production.

These dynamics are obvious benefits to Empire’s Pitfield project in Australia.

‘Having this project in a tier-one location like Western Australia, with infrastructure in place, really does set us up to be a strategic asset.’

The strategic importance is underlined by the government support enjoyed by Empire, with Australia giving a 43.5 per cent R&D tax rebate on every dollar spent on the project.

A quick guide to the titanium market

The bulk of the titanium market is in pigments and paints, with titanium dioxide (TiO₂) added to the mix to help the colourings reflect light – it’s titanium that typically creates the brightness and ‘opaqueness’ of modern paint.

Titanium’s durability and resistance to the elements mean that premium paints are long lasting, chemically stable and generally avoid becoming discoloured over time.

Titanium dioxide is irreplaceable in the pigment industry, currently, no substitute exists.

Now, it is not always the cheapest product to produce and when creating a premium titanium product, it is all about purities (or, more accurately, it is about avoiding impurities) – but, we’ll come back to the important point shortly.

Titanium metals – used in aircrafts, electric vehicle chassis, and consumer products including iPhones and golf clubs – meanwhile, account currently for around 10 per cent of the overall titanium market.

‘Titanium metal is the wonder metal in the sense that it doesn’t corrode, it’s non-toxic, it’s half the mass, half the weight of steel, for the equivalent strength.’

It’s got huge market penetration, but it’s still an expensive metal to make. So, it doesn’t have the volume of sales that, for instance, steels like stainless steels can get.

‘But that can change over time, and I think it will as we make titanium metal more affordable; it’ll take a bigger market share.’

Pitfield at a glance

Empire’s work at its flagship Pitfield project, in Western Australia, has identified a giant and high-grade discovery.

It currently has an Exploration Target estimated to be between 26 and 32 billion tonnes, containing between 4.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent TiO₂.

Previous rounds of drilling were about finding and defining the system, whereas the most recent programme of aircore drilling (a cheaper, faster method) was used to excavate material for Empire’s team to send to the metallurgical labs.

The aircore programme followed impressive results from a detailed analysis of Pitfield’s ore, which has significantly opened up the Empire Metals story.

A premium high-purity product

In early March, Empire announced via RNS the findings of preliminary testwork that measured 91.6 per cent titanium dioxide and was without any toxic impurities.

Put in more simple terms, the lab produced a physical sample of titanium product that was high grade, high purity and, because it has no toxic impurities (something that’s rare for titanium deposits), it will require a lot less processing to be ‘ready’ for use by customers.

This testwork will now be repeated, with more scale, using the larger samples taken from the aircore programme.

‘The product we made was an exceptionally good result, one that arguably took us a bit by surprise, because it’s the first time we tried to make something, and we nailed it,’ Bunn highlighted.

‘It came out with very little impurity.

‘We can’t take all the credit for that; the technical team did a great job, but that’s a factor of the quality of the material in the ground. It’s what’s in the ground that counts. And what we have in this ore body is a deposit that is free of these contaminants in the first place.

‘There’s no uranium and thorium minerals; there’s no phosphate or vanadium, no chromium or the other ‘heavy metals’ that tend to be difficult for the pigment industry to deal with.

‘They’re not present in the ore to start with. So, they can’t come into the end product.’

What comes next

Basically, the upshot is that Empire is now on an accelerated path to start developing an end-product so that it can begin to establish an initial market for its titanium products.

At the same time, Empire is driving a campaign of work to bring the project up to feasibility status.

‘Our challenge is to develop an integrated process, rather than just go out with a low-value product that is cheap and cheerful to make, but not really make a large return on it,’ Bunn highlighted.

‘We’re looking at this as a much more strategic development.

‘We have the world’s largest titanium discovery in this sedimentary basin; we believe it could host over a third of the total world’s resources in one place. So, in the end we’ are talking about hundreds of years’ worth of mining.

‘What I’m saying is, we’ve got to think through what sort of company should we become and what should we be doing to maximise value.

‘The strategic importance of being able to not only make a high-value pigment, but also to make metal from this deposit is something that we’re very much investigating.

‘Metal is the critical part of the titanium story.

‘The paint companies might argue the pigment for their paint is critical, but I’m going to argue that it’s the metal that is the geopolitical prize here.’

‘I think once we get further through the process development and start to show people what the economics look like – that’s when I think we’ll see a lot more interest from strategic stakeholders.’

Priced at around 11p in London, Empire shares are up some 55 per cent in 2025 to date. The company also recently started trading on the OTCQB under the ticker symbol EPMLF, opening the story up to US investors who are keen for exposure to strategic metals.

But valued at around £70million there’s evidently a lot more running room as the junior mine developer continues to prove and spell out the scope of opportunity – and, as the market gets more excited about the titanium story.