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04/25/2024 12:05:01 pm

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Project Titanium Intrigues Texas Business Community

titanium, Tesla

(Photo : REUTERS)

Project Titanium, the code name for an upcoming megasite that's worth more or less $200 million and may rise between Hutto and Taylor, is generating a lot of buzz in the local Texan business community but officials are keeping mum about it, a report on Kxan revealed.

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According to the report, the megasite is composed of over 1,200 acres of land between the two cities-"a prime spot for industrial development and creation." The area is also accessible via the Union Pacific railroad, not to mention water and electricity sources.

Kxan hinted that the megasite could house an aerospace or automotive manufacturing facility, perhaps one owned by electric car maker Tesla. Hutto, Taylor, Williamson County, and the City of Austin courted Tesla with lovely incentives as it scouted for a location for its $5 billion lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility in 2014 but ended up constructing the plant in Reno, Nevada. Despite Tesla's decision, rumors about the deal attracted investors to the area.

Titanium-related industries, specifically aerospace and automotive parts manufacturing, are currently big business worldwide. In the United States, a number of manufacturing facilities have cropped up to meet the uptick in demand. For instance, Delaware-based titanium manufacturing company Allied Titanium Inc., which has a main factory in China announced, in May last year that it planned to open a new facility in Sequim, Washington, D.C. The facility would employ 50 to 150 people, the report said.

"We know that we can manufacture parts cost-effectively in Sequim," Allied Titanium CEO Christopher Greimes was quoted as saying by the report. "The land and the taxes and the power are less than they are in China."

As expected, titanium miners, too, are bullish on the uptrend. White Mountain Titanium Corporation (OTCQB:WMTM) is one company that is set to respond to the rising demand in titanium once it commences production on its Cerro Blanco project in the Atacama region of Chile.  

The company said three out of its nine targets at its Cerro Blanco asset in the Atacama covers a rutile resource approximately at 112 million tons at a 0.5 percent cut-off grade. The company said that its upcoming mine has a capacity of 80,000 tons of high grade rutile concentrate yearly that could be expanded to 130,000 tons during the mine's fourth year of production through an open pit mining and a milling/flotation processing plant configuration. 

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