Is that not because titanium recycling was a crazy expensive and very complex until around 2010 when VAM became the preferred method. it is still crazy expensive and very selective on what can be recycled thanks to oxide contaminated feed stocks (shit titanium is a thing, who knew). there isn't really a scalable process for decontamination which makes life pretty hard too.
having said all that, it's also a bitch to refine in general from ore, very very energy intensive and pretty shit for the environment, so year, maybe better with carbon fibre....... bugger..... aluminium........ are bollocks. BAMBOO is the future, or maybe cheese.
I don't know all the ins and outs, but I've thrown two cracked Ti frames in the recycling in the past, and just assumed they would be properly dealt with by magic fairies wearing green overalls. I never imagined they would either be shipped across the planet or even potentially gone into landfill.
Hoping at least this Ti recycling center is working out (there must have been a solid business case for the investment to happen) and importantly isn't just used for industrial waste from industry. I mean, Ti is found in lots of consumer goods that can simply fall out of fashion too.