The Board of Directors of the world's largest titanium producer VSMPO-Avisma on June 27 should approve the sale of the Titan CCP, which owns a license for the ilmenite deposit Tsentralnoye in the Tambov Region (ilmenite is a raw material for the smelting of titanium). There is no special news in this. The head of VSMPO-Avisma Mikhail Voevodin has been saying for several years that the project is economically unattractive (investments estimated at 11 billion rubles). The authorities of the Tambov region, in turn, do not want to lose a major project: at the end of 2016, the head of the region, Alexander Nikitin, attracted the attention of Vladimir Putin, and in September 2017 announced the search for investors. Obviously, this search will continue after the license is removed from VSMPO-Avisma to the intermediate buyer: in mid-May, the state corporation for the development of the Tambov region established its own OOO GPK Titan, which is very likely to be bought back by the Central.

Interesting is another. The Russian titanium monopolist, which annually consumes more than 100 thousand tons of ilmenite, purchased the Central Titanium monopoly in 2011 against the backdrop of supply disruptions from Ukraine. Since then, much has changed and even improved for the company, but somehow surprising for the current political and economic agenda. Management of the Ukrainian supplier of ilmenite, Volnogorsk GOK, in 2015 transferred from Dmitry Firtash's DF Group to the Ukrainian state OGKK. It would seem that it prevented Kiev from breaking contracts for the supply of raw materials to a Russian company whose blocking stake also belongs to Rostekh. But nothing like this happened. In 2016, VSMPO-Avisma itself launched in the Dnipropetrovsk region Demurinsky GOK for 15 thousand tons of ilmenite, but refused to increase its capacity. Despite any political conflicts, Ukraine is the main supplier of titanium concentrate for the company.

Mikhail Voevodin told me in 2017 that "from the point of view of raw materials security and logistics, of course, it is convenient to have a source of raw materials near to you", but ilmenite is not in short supply, but its purchases - only $ 20 million per year. But, it seems, it's not just a matter of raw materials and prices, but in the special status of the company.

The position of the world's largest producer of metal titanium with a share of about 20% and a long-term partnership with Boeing and Airbus makes VSMPO-Avisma an extremely unlikely target for sanctions, both Western and Russian response (70% of output goes for export). If VSMPO-Avisma retains the informal status of a "neutral territory", the companies are unlikely to face problems with Ukrainian raw materials. But even if Ukraine suddenly goes against the needs of the United States, the fields of China, India and Africa will remain at the disposal of VSMPO-Avisma.