Japan's titanium industry is continuing its product diversification downstream to broaden the base of demand, especially to the consumer product area.

This is reflected in the increasing volume of shipments of titanium mill products to distributors in recent years who sell in small lots to small users. The distributors purchase such mill products as sheet, plate, bar, pipe and wire rod from major mills that only deal with large customers.

"Shipments handled by distributors are growing," said Kazuyasu Kitaoka, executive director and secretary general of the Japan Titanium Society, noting that sales through the distribution market have come to take a nearly 20 percent share of domestic demand.

The change is also reflected in the composition of membership of the association, which now has 24 regular member companies and 122 associate member firms. Compared with four or five years ago, the number of core members has remained almost unchanged, but the associate membership has tripled.

Titanium , the executive noted, is finding uses in increasing varieties of consumer products that now include, just to mention a few at random, golf clubs, watches, spectacle frames, bicycles, motorcycles, cameras, water purifiers, cigarette lighters, cooking pans, vacuum bottles, mountaineering boots, fishing gear, earrings, wheelchairs and even face protectors for Japanese fencing.