$5.7 Million New Titanium Metal Powder Process

U.S. Defense Agency Awards $5.7 Million to DuPont and MER Corporation for New Titanium Metal Powder Process: "In addition, the new process makes titanium metal powder that can be directly formed into desired shapes. It allows manufacturers to make parts faster, with less machining and significantly less scrap."

Um, guess what I did the past two summers? Make titanium powder directly into parts, minimizing machining and material usage.
That isn't a wholly new technique resulting from the DuPont process.
Once they finally get costs down and produce high-quality powder (IE clean without just filtering out the fine particles, which is what's generally done when you order 'high purity' powder, they just filter out the more reactive smaller particles so they reduce the overall Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen and Chlorine content) then it'll more than halve the cost of the raw material, and skip the required ultra-concentrated Cl needed in the "50-year old process" mentioned in the article.
However, it must be pointed out that most Ti producers are expanding production by expanding their 'sponge' (part of the afore-linked-to Kroll process) capacity rather than investing in any of the new techniques being developed. They obviously aren't expecting these new methods to compete in capacity or cost any time soon.