In brief: Apple will buy up to $100 million of titanium from Perryman, a Pennsylvania mill, for its folding iPhone Duo.
Implications:
Shared capacity: A big electronics buyer now draws on the same US mill capacity that aerospace and medical buyers use.
Scrap route: A mill that melts mostly scrap, as Perryman does, leans less on imported sponge.
Duty: Imported titanium sponge and ingot carry a 15% duty under normal US trade rules, per the USGS, while scrap enters duty-free.
The News
Apple committed on Oct 20 to buy up to $100 million of titanium from Perryman Company, a family-owned mill in Houston, Pennsylvania, for the case of its folding iPhone Duo, the company said. The commitment runs three years. Perryman melts, forges and rolls the grade 5 titanium at that site from at least 80% recycled content, and will also supply titanium for other Apple products.
Apple also expanded its work with Qnity Electronics, a Delaware company that makes films for the iPhone 18 Pro’s variable aperture camera. Both deals sit under Apple’s American Manufacturing Program, part of a four-year, $600 billion US commitment. Apple says US companies in more than a dozen states now make nearly 100 parts for the two phones. Corning, for one, will make all iPhone and Apple Watch cover glass at its plant in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, by the end of the year.
Why It Matters
Apple is committing to buy US-made titanium, even though the country no longer produces titanium sponge, the raw material used to make new titanium.
No US sponge: The US made no titanium sponge in 2025, according to the USGS. Its last sponge plant, in Utah, closed in 2024.
Record imports: US sponge imports reached an estimated record of 44,000 metric tons in 2025, and Japan supplied 77% of them from 2021 to 2024. China makes about 70% of the world’s sponge, by our math from USGS estimates.
Scrap helps, partly: Melting scrap cuts the need for sponge, but the US also imported an estimated 32,000 tons of titanium scrap in 2025, led by the UK.
Who’s Exposed
Most US titanium goes to aerospace. The rest goes to armor, chemical processing, marine hardware, medical implants and power generation, per the USGS. Apple’s deal adds a large electronics buyer to the domestic mill capacity those industries draw on, at up to $100 million over three years. Medical makers are pulling more production home too: BD has committed $19 billion to US manufacturing.
Peer Insights
Apple has used a purchase commitment for US metal before, and so has GM. In 2025, Apple committed $500 million to buy rare earth magnets made at MP Materials’ plant in Fort Worth, Texas, and to fund a recycling line at Mountain Pass, California. GM signed a binding deal in 2021 to buy rare earth materials, alloys and magnets from MP Materials, which started building the Texas plant the next year.
