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Norsk Titanium Receives Thales Alenia Space Contract to Build Structural Additive Manufactured Components for Orbital Missions

Rapid Plasma Deposition™ titanium qualification parts scheduled for 2016 delivery

FARNBOROUGH, UK — July 13, 2016 — Norsk Titanium AS, the world’s pioneering supplier of aerospace-grade, additive manufactured, structural titanium components, today announced it has signed a contract with Thales Alenia Space, the joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo-Finmeccanica (33%) to develop, produce, and test components for use in spaceflight.

Under the terms of the order, Norsk Titanium will collaborate with Thales Alenia Space to develop and produce an initial qualification lot of titanium components in 2016 in support of a joint test and acceptance program for spaceflight. Following the successful qualification process, Norsk Titanium expects to begin full rate production of Thales Alenia Space components in 2017.

Each component has a final mass of more than 3 kilograms, and changing over to Rapid Plasma Deposition™ cuts the current part buy-to-fly ratio in half and reduces lead-time by 6 months over incumbent forging processes. Additional engineering details of the structural RPD™ parts for the qualification order were not disclosed.

“We are thrilled to partner with Thales Alenia Space and to extend the benefits of Rapid Plasma Deposition™ from earth-based commercial airliners all the way into outer space,” said Norsk Titanium CEO Warren M. Boley, Jr. “The space frontier is a great market for our titanium RPD™ parts since they are extremely fast to build, incredibly light, and can be used in applications of significant structural importance.”

About Norsk Titanium AS

Norsk Titanium is a global leader in metal 3D printing, innovating the future of metal manufacturing by enabling a paradigm shift to a clean and sustainable manufacturing process. With its proprietary Rapid Plasma Deposition® (RPD®) technology and 700 MT of production capacity, Norsk Titanium offers cost-efficient 3D printing of value-added metal parts to a large addressable market. RPD® technology uses significantly less raw material, energy, and time than traditional energy-intensive forming methods, presenting customers with an opportunity to better manage input costs, logistics, and environmental impact. RPD® printed parts are already flying on commercial aircraft, and Norsk Titanium has gained significant traction with large defense and industrial customers