The Saudi Ministry of Investment signed on Monday an investment cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Tasnee and Boeing to explore the potential investment and development collaboration opportunities to advance the aviation-grade titanium alloy value chain in the Kingdom for mid and downstream applications. Tasnee CEO and board member Mutlaq al-Morished stressed that the agreement aims to explore potential cooperation investment and development opportunities between the two companies to enhance the titanium value chain to serve intermediate industries. Morished told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Ministry of Investment supports the two parties by facilitating their collaboration with the relevant government sectors and addressing the challenges. He indicated that Tasnee is the only company in the Middle East that manufactures titanium "sponge," used in manufacturing aircraft, nuclear submarines, missiles, and satellites. It produces 15,500 tons annually, equivalent to 10 percent of global production. The CEO added that the metal is strategic and contributes to achieving Vision 2030 aimed at further localizing technology for advanced industries that raise the competitiveness of the national product and boost the contribution of the private sector and non-oil exports to the gross domestic product. The Advanced Metal Industries Cluster (AMIC) was established jointly by Tasnee and Cristal in 2014 with a mandate to develop the Titanium Value chain in the Kingdom. AMIC has established the Upstream projects by setting up a Titanium Sponge plant in Yanbu Industrial City through a JV with Toho – Japan. The company has established a titanium smelter plant in Jazan City for primary and downstream industries which are considered the world's largest, with an annual capacity of 500,000 tons of titanium slag and 250,000 tons of pig iron. In 2021, Tasnee announced that the Titanium Ilmenite Smelter Plant is forecast to start trial operations in Q4 of 2021. The first batch was produced in early December of the same year. Tasnee announced that after implementing all required modifications by Metso Outotec and the relevant contractors, the mechanical completion was achieved in 2021, followed by start-up preparations and heat-up of the furnace. The furnace load will ramp up from the current 18MW to 30 MW by mid-January 2022. It is the first holding point planned to last 90 days, to optimize the operating parameters of the furnace. The success of the operation run at the first holding point will then be followed by ramping the load up gradually to around 45MW (70 percent of design capacity) by the end of Q2 2022, the target load for the execution of the sustainable operation test. The operation was targeted to achieve this milestone in Q4 2022, and the furnace would increase its load to a design capacity of 60 MW.