Inside the new MPS plant in Poland. Photo by MPS
In October, Ukrainian-owned company MPS Technology, is launching new ferro-titanium production in Poland.
The factory in Częstochowa began operating in 2020 with two production lines dedicated to processing titanium turnings for third-party titanium ingot melting and for ferro-titanium production at its 20-year-old sister plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Following the expansion into ferro-titanium production, the Polish site now fully complements its parent company MetPromServis’s capacities in Ukraine.
The plant will produce all grades of ferro-titanium, and will have the capacity to produce between 200 and 600tonnes per month (tpm) of the ferro-alloy, depending on the number of shifts, MPS owner Feliks Kusaiev tells the MMTA.
The initial plan is to run one 40-hour shift per week, making 200-240tpm of ferro-titanium, since the plant in Ukraine is also currently in production. With both plants running at similar capacity, the two sites should produce 400-400/tpm between them. Prior to the war in Ukraine that started in February last year, the Zaporizhzhia plant had been making 500-550 tpm of ferro-titanium on average.
MPS Technology was founded in 2018 to expand MetPromServis Ukrainian business by positioning operations geographically closer to the European supply chain for both raw material sourcing and for sales logistics, with its own warehouse located in Europe. It also focused on advancing its capabilities for processing high quality titanium secondary feedstock for the medical and aviation industries.
MPS had spent 18 months building and commissioning its plant in Poland, which entered operation in 2022 with the two scrap processing lines.
The clean and short-cycle scrap processing technology the plant uses was developed in-house, Kusaiev tells MMTA. The site included the scrap processing facility dedicated to producing aerospace quality feedstock, a lab, crushing and storage facilities including 800t storage facility for finished goods and an office. The scrap processing site in Poland complemented the ferroalloy facilities in Ukraine producing ferro-titanium and ferro-nickel. .
“We began 2022 with a significant expansion of our titanium business, gradually bringing in new clients both for raw material purchasing and for ferro-titanium sales, where with many clients we signed yearly and quarterly contracts,” Kusaiev says. “ Unfortunately, the war made changes to our plans, and I had to revise them urgently, since complete uncertainly lay ahead!”
“We’ve had to give up on expansion, and I focused all attention on fulfilling our long-term contracts and those signed preciously.” When the war began, a number of containers were en route to the Black Sea port of Odesa and some were already at port. MPS acted quickly and in April bough a site next to its factory in Częstochowa, Poland, and in May began to build a new smelter from the ground up.
“In this project, I took into account all the visible shortcomings we had observed in the 20 years of our original plant’s operations and among competitors to improve ecological performance (it is important and possible to keep metallurgical production clean), power supply, productivity, process automation, product quality and to create a comfortable working environment,” Kusaiev says.
MPS spent the summer training its workforce in the new smelting, crushing and packaging processes, running the plant in pilot mode, producing trial batches of ferro-titanium and getting them certified by customers. It then spent September fine-tuning its equipment and process. Commercial scale production will begin in mid-October.
In a wartime environment, MetPromServis’s plant in Ukraine has cut back its operations to one weekly shift.
“We have kept some of the core staff who have worked at the plant for more than 20 years – I cannot simply close that plant even once I’ve built a new one,” Kusaiev says. “Some of the workers have been relocated to Ukraine and employed at the new plant, we are paying for their and their families’ housing. Some of the lads have gone off to defend Ukraine, and, sadly, some will not come back from the war.”
Despite this, the Ukrainian plant remains in operation, continuing to receive feedstock from Poland. Although the Polish site can now run as a fully integrated, independent operation, MPS still hopes to restore the capacities and markets Ukraine has lost in the past 18 months.
