AbstractAn elemental foil metallurgy process, based on pure titanium and aluminium foils, has been developed to produce TiAl based intermetal1ic compounds. The processing comprises five steps: coiling of pure titanium and aluminium foils, encapsulating, reaction annealing, precompacting, and hot isostatic pressing. Samples processed by this method have low oxygen contents (0·04–0·07 wt-%); a duplex layer microstructure is obtained. Foil metallurgy is shown to be an attractive processing technique to produce near net shape formed components fabricated from high quality titanium aluminides by conventional closed die forging of encapsulated Ti/Al coils before hot isostatic pressing, i.e. before the formation of the brittle TiAl.MST/2045