Tungsten

Why it matters: Tungsten's density (19.3 g/cm³, comparable to gold and near depleted uranium's 19.05 g/cm³) and extreme hardness make tungsten heavy alloys the standard material for kinetic-energy penetrators outside the United States, and the designated hedge material for the US Army as depleted-uranium (DU) alternatives are developed. Net US import reliance on tungsten has exceeded 50% of apparent consumption every year from 2020 through 2024 (USGS MCS 2025).

1. Kinetic energy penetrators — the DU/tungsten split

The US Army's standard 120mm tank round for the M1 Abrams, the M829 series (M829, M829A1/A2/A3/A4), uses a depleted-uranium penetrator prized for its self-sharpening "adiabatic shear" behavior on impact (M829, Wikipedia). Tungsten heavy alloy (90–97% W with nickel-iron or nickel-copper binder) is the material used by nearly every other NATO member's tank ammunition — including Germany's DM63/DM73 (Rheinmetall) and France's SHARD (Nexter) — because DU carries radiological handling and political constraints that most allied militaries avoid (120×570mm NATO ammunition, Wikipedia). The US Army has separately developed the Advanced Kinetic Energy-Tungsten (AKE-T) round as a non-DU alternative to the M829A4.

2. Armor-piercing ammunition and cemented carbides

USGS lists depleted uranium alloys or hardened steel as the only listed substitutes for "cemented tungsten carbides or tungsten alloys in armor-piercing projectiles" (USGS MCS 2025), underscoring that no drop-in civilian substitute exists at the density and hardness military specifications require. Tungsten carbide cutting tools, drill bits and wear-resistant components also underpin the machine-tool and munitions-manufacturing industrial base that produces the penetrators themselves.

3. Radiation shielding and counterweights

Tungsten heavy alloys are used for radiation shielding in nuclear-related defense systems, and as precision counterweights and balance components in missiles and guided munitions (Tungsten Alloy Defense Material overview). China's new export-control code 1C004, introduced in the February 2025 measure, explicitly targets tungsten-nickel-iron and tungsten-nickel-copper heavy alloys meeting density and tensile-strength thresholds used in exactly these applications (China Briefing dual-use catalogue comparison).

4. National Defense Stockpile procurement

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) posted a Request for Information in August 2025 (solicitation SP8000-26-R-TUNG) seeking 1,715 metric tons of tungsten ores and concentrates for the National Defense Stockpile (SAM.gov solicitation, Aug 2025). DLA's FY2025 Annual Materials Plan lists a ceiling of 4,500,500 pounds of contained tungsten (~2,040 metric tons) for potential stockpile acquisition (Quest Metals analysis citing DLA data). Separately, DLA issued a solicitation (SP8000-26-R-0014) for a five-year, sole-source sodium tungstate IDIQ contract to Tungco Inc., valued at $1 million to $50 million, to secure up to 100,000 kilograms for the stockpile (SAM.gov solicitation, Feb 2026).

China mined 67,000 tonnes of tungsten in 2024 out of a world total of 81,000 tonnes — roughly 83% of global mine production — up from 66,000 of 79,500 tonnes (83%) in 2023 (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025). The next-largest producers — Vietnam (3,400t), Russia (2,000t), Bolivia (1,600t), North Korea (1,700t) and Rwanda (1,200t) — together account for less than 12% of world output. China also holds the largest reported reserve base at 2,400,000 tonnes of a world total exceeding 4,600,000 tonnes (USGS MCS 2025).

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025, tungsten chapter.

Chinese APT export volumes collapse under licensing

Following the 4 February 2025 controls, Chinese tungsten APT export volume fell almost 70%, from 782 tonnes in full-year 2024 to 243 tonnes in the first 11 months of 2025, according to GACC data cited by Fastmarkets (Fastmarkets, 9 Jan 2026). The reduction reflects the shift from unrestricted export to a case-by-case licensing regime rather than a formal quota cut.

US import reliance and the Korea pivot

The United States has recorded net import reliance above 50% of apparent consumption every year from 2020 through 2024, with no active domestic tungsten mine (USGS MCS 2025). South Korea's Sangdong Mine — dormant for more than 30 years before Almonty Industries restarted active mining in December 2025 — is positioned as the single largest new non-Chinese supply source, with Phase 1 commissioned in March 2026 (~2,300 t/yr concentrate) and Phase 2 targeted for 2027 (~4,600 t/yr), designed to reach roughly 40% of Western tungsten demand at full capacity (Almonty Industries SEC 6-K, 16 Mar 2026).

A parallel December 2024 US tariff response

In December 2024, the United States imposed a 25% tariff on Chinese tungsten imports, a policy move that predates and runs parallel to China's February 2025 export licensing regime, reinforcing incentives to source non-Chinese tungsten (Quest Metals analysis, Apr 2025). Separately, a Financial Times report cited by Korean media describes a Department of War policy that will ban procurement of Chinese, Russian, North Korean and Iranian tungsten for military use starting in 2027.

A compact chronology tracing tungsten from a steady, low-volatility industrial metal to a front-line US-China critical-minerals flashpoint. Each entry links to the primary record.

1. Cemented carbide (hardmetal) — cutting tools, mining and drilling

Tungsten monocarbide grains cemented in a cobalt or nickel binder produce hardmetal — materials combining extreme hardness with toughness, used for metal-cutting inserts, mining and construction drill bits, and oil-and-gas drilling components. USGS identifies cemented carbide parts for cutting and wear-resistant applications as the single largest US end use at more than 60% of estimated consumption, a share essentially unchanged since at least 2021 (USGS Minerals Yearbook 2021, Tungsten; USGS MCS 2026). The EU's SCRREEN critical raw materials factsheet similarly reports that 67% of tungsten consumed in the EU goes to tungsten carbide manufacturing, with a further 11% into tungsten metal products (SCRREEN Tungsten CRM factsheet). Kennametal, Sandvik and Ceratizit are the largest Western hardmetal tooling producers consuming APT and tungsten carbide powder as feedstock.

2. Mill products, wire and chemicals

Beyond carbide, tungsten is drawn into wire and filaments for electrical, electronic, heating, lighting and welding applications (notably incandescent and halogen lamp filaments, and TIG-welding electrodes), and processed into tungsten chemicals — sodium tungstate, tungsten oxide and related compounds used as catalysts, pigments and flame retardants (USGS MCS 2026). The Defense Logistics Agency's five-year sole-source IDIQ contract for up to 100,000 kilograms of sodium tungstate for the National Defense Stockpile illustrates the chemicals segment's direct link to strategic reserve policy (SAM.gov solicitation, Feb 2026). Tungsten heavy alloys and mill products (bar, rod, sheet) also supply radiation shielding, precision counterweights and vibration-damping components in aerospace and medical equipment.

3. Lead-free ammunition: tungsten shot for waterfowl and upland hunting

The United States banned lead shot for waterfowl and coot hunting nationwide in 1991 after documenting lead poisoning in birds that ingested spent pellets; the US Fish and Wildlife Service has since approved a growing list of non-toxic shot formulations under 50 CFR 20.21(j), most of them tungsten alloys --- including tungsten-iron, tungsten-bronze, tungsten-nickel-iron ("Hevi-Shot"), tungsten-polymer, tungsten-matrix and tungsten-tin-bismuth — alongside steel and bismuth-tin (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nontoxic shot regulations). Tungsten's 19.3 g/cm³ density — nearly 70% denser than lead and more than twice the density of steel shot — allows manufacturers to load smaller, denser pellets that retain lethal energy at longer range; Tungsten Super Shot (TSS), a 95% tungsten/5% nickel-iron alloy at 18–18.5 g/cm³, has become the premium segment of the non-toxic ammunition market since its commercial introduction (Strung Dispatch, "The Tungsten Revolution"; Federal Premium, non-toxic shot history). Winchester's "Last Call TSS" and Hevi-Shot's "Hevi-X" and "Hevi-Metal" lines are commercial examples sold across 12- to .410-gauge shotshells (GUNSweek, Sep 2025).

4. Kinetic-energy penetrators and the DU/tungsten military split

Tungsten heavy alloy (90–97% W with nickel-iron or nickel-copper binder) is the standard penetrator material for nearly every NATO member's tank ammunition other than the United States, which retains depleted uranium in its M829 series (M829, M829A1/A2/A3/A4) for the M1 Abrams' 120mm gun because of DU's self-sharpening "adiabatic shear" fracture behavior on impact (M829, Wikipedia). Germany's DM63/DM73 (Rheinmetall) and France's SHARD (Nexter) both use tungsten heavy alloy penetrators because DU carries radiological handling and political constraints most allied militaries avoid (120×570mm NATO ammunition, Wikipedia). The US Army's Advanced Kinetic Energy-Tungsten (AKE-T) program is developing a non-DU successor to M829A4, underscoring that tungsten remains the leading hedge material should DU ever be phased out of US service. USGS lists depleted-uranium alloys or hardened steel as the only substitutes for cemented tungsten carbides or tungsten alloys in armor-piercing projectiles, meaning the substitution risk runs in the opposite direction: it is tungsten that substitutes for DU, not the reverse (USGS MCS 2026).

Substitution status by application (USGS MCS 2026): for cemented tungsten carbides, potential substitutes include carbides based on molybdenum, niobium or titanium, ceramics, cermets and tool steels, but USGS notes most of these options merely reduce rather than replace the tungsten content. Certain tungsten mill products can substitute molybdenum, and some tungsten steels can be replaced with molybdenum steels — though most molybdenum steels still contain some tungsten. Tungsten-filament lighting can be substituted by carbon-nanotube filaments, induction lighting or LEDs. For high-density or radiation-shielding applications, depleted uranium or lead are the listed alternatives — the inverse of the defense-sector substitution logic described above (USGS MCS 2026).

1. Panasqueira, Portugal — Europe's oldest continuously operating tungsten mine

Almonty Industries' Panasqueira mine in central Portugal has produced tungsten concentrate for more than a century and remains one of only a handful of active primary tungsten mines in the European Union (Almonty Industries, Panasqueira Mine project page). USGS's MCS 2026 country table lists Portugal's 2025 mine production at 700 tonnes, up from 650 tonnes in 2024, against reserves of 3,400 tonnes (USGS MCS 2026). Almonty commenced a new drilling program at Panasqueira in November 2025 aimed at extending mine life and upgrading resources (Almonty Industries release, 3 Nov 2025). Panasqueira's scale is small relative to Sangdong, but its century-long operating history and EU location make it a strategically significant non-Chinese, non-Korean supply point for European hardmetal producers.

2. Barruecopardo, Spain — EQ Resources' record-production asset

Australian-listed EQ Resources (ASX: EQR) owns the Barruecopardo mine in Spain via its Saloro subsidiary, acquired in 2023 (Mining Technology, 11 Aug 2023). The mine achieved record tungsten production in its September 2025 quarter and again in its December 2025 quarter, with quarterly output rising 33% quarter-on-quarter to 38,292 mtu (Sharecafe, 4 Nov 2025; EQ Resources quarterly update, Jan 2026). Spain's national 2025 mine production is listed by USGS at 800 tonnes, up from 700 tonnes in 2024, against a reserve base of 66,000 tonnes — the third-largest reported reserve outside China, Russia and Vietnam (USGS MCS 2026).

3. King Island (Dolphin Mine), Australia — Group 6 Metals' scheelite restart

The Dolphin tungsten mine on King Island, Tasmania — formerly King Island Scheelite, rebranded Group 6 Metals in 2021 — restarted scheelite production after securing an initial offtake agreement with Austria's Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG in 2019 for roughly 20% of planned annual output (1,400 tonnes of tungsten oxide over four years), followed by a second offtake agreement with a Hong Kong-based metals trader in 2020 (Small Caps, 8 Apr 2019; Small Caps, 2 Sep 2020). The Tasmanian government extended a AU$10 million loan to support the restart and, by March 2025, had moved to take a direct equity stake via a debt-for-equity swap after the company faced financial difficulty (Pulse Tasmania, 24 Mar 2025). Australia's national 2025 mine production is listed by USGS at 1,000 tonnes, up from 920 tonnes in 2024, against reserves of 570,000 tonnes — the second-largest national reserve base after China (USGS MCS 2026).

4. The refining gap: concentrate production is diversifying faster than APT capacity

Almost all of the new non-Chinese mine supply — Sangdong, Panasqueira, Barruecopardo, King Island — produces tungsten concentrate, not finished APT or tungsten carbide powder. Austria's Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG and US-based Global Tungsten & Powders (a Plansee Group company) remain among the very few non-Chinese processors capable of converting concentrate into APT, ferrotungsten and carbide-grade powder at meaningful scale. This concentrate-to-APT conversion bottleneck is the reason Sangdong's offtake agreements were structured with defense-focused processors (Tungsten Parts Wyoming, Metal Tech) rather than sold as raw concentrate on the open market (Almonty Industries release, 7 May 2025), and underlines why announced US entities pursuing secondary refining and recycling capability, such as NioCorp Developments and Ucore Rare Metals — both better known for rare-earth and niobium separation — have signaled interest in diversifying into tungsten intermediate processing as part of broader critical-minerals refining build-outs, though neither has announced a committed tungsten production line as of mid-2026.

1. Why tungsten has no futures market: the failed LME launch attempts

The London Metal Exchange has repeatedly explored listing minor-metal contracts — molybdenum was launched as a cash-settled contract in 2010, and cobalt trades as a physically settled LME contract — but tungsten has never achieved a durable, liquid LME listing (MetalMiner, 12 Oct 2018). Minor-metal contracts on the LME face two structural problems that are especially acute for tungsten: the market is dominated by a small number of Chinese state-linked producers and a handful of Western buyers, which limits the number of independent price-setters, and its dominant traded form (APT) is a chemical intermediate rather than a homogenous refined metal suited to LME-style warehouse warranting and physical brand-listing (LME Minor Metals FAQs; LME Insight, brand listing explainer). As a result, physical tungsten trade continues to reference agency price assessments (Argus, Fastmarkets) rather than an exchange-cleared benchmark, unlike copper, aluminium, nickel, zinc, lead and tin, all of which have deep LME futures markets.

2. EU Critical Raw Materials Act: tungsten's dual Critical + Strategic listing

Tungsten appears on both of the EU Critical Raw Materials Act's lists: the broader Critical Raw Materials list (high supply risk and economic importance) and the narrower Strategic Raw Materials list reserved for materials essential to the green and digital transitions and defense applications, alongside copper, gallium, germanium, lithium, graphite and rare earths (CSPZP CRMA briefing, 2025/2026; Critical Raw Materials Act, Wikipedia, EU annex summary). Under the CRMA's 2030 benchmarks, the EU aims to source at least 10% of its annual strategic raw material consumption from domestic extraction, 40% from domestic processing, and 25% from recycling, and to avoid sourcing more than 65% of any strategic material from a single third country (European Commission, Critical Raw Materials Act overview). Tungsten's inclusion on the Strategic list gives Panasqueira- and Barruecopardo-type projects priority access to EU permitting fast-tracking and financing support as EU Strategic Projects; New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade noted in 2025 that the EU hosts seven Strategic Projects related to lithium, tungsten, nickel, copper and recycling (MFAT, EU Critical Raw Minerals Update, Oct 2025).

3. Recycling: the highest secondary-supply share among critical metals

Tungsten's carbide-based end use gives it an unusually well-developed scrap-recovery channel compared with most critical minerals: worn or broken cemented-carbide tooling retains its tungsten content almost entirely and can be reprocessed chemically (zinc-recycling or chemical digestion) back into tungsten powder feedstock. Kennametal operates a dedicated carbide-recycling program that pays scrap suppliers by weight and has quoted rates as high as $52 per pound for clean scrap carbide in early 2026 market conditions (Kennametal Carbide Recycling; Machinist trade discussion, Mar 2026, citing Kennametal scrap pricing). Austria's Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG similarly operates carbide-scrap recycling alongside its primary APT production, giving Europe an integrated primary-plus-secondary tungsten supply chain. Historical USGS data placed US secondary tungsten recovery at a meaningful share of total supply, though the 2026 edition withholds exact secondary production and consumption tonnages to avoid disclosing proprietary company data (USGS MCS 2026). Industry estimates commonly cited by the tungsten trade — including analyses referencing International Tungsten Industry Association (ITIA) data — put global secondary supply at roughly 30–35% of total tungsten supply, among the highest recycling rates of any metal on Western critical-minerals lists, reflecting both the high scrap value of carbide and the chemical recoverability of tungsten compounds (International Tungsten Industry Association, publications).

4. Forward look 2026–2030: capacity pipeline, price normalization risk and demand scenarios

The core supply-side event to watch through 2027 is Sangdong's Phase 2 expansion, targeted to double concentrate output to approximately 4,600 tonnes per year and lift Almonty's claimed share of Western (non-China) tungsten demand toward 40% (Almonty Industries SEC 6-K, 16 Mar 2026). Three additional Western mine-development projects — Fireweed's Mactung (Yukon), Northcliff's Sisson (New Brunswick) and Golden Metal Resources' Pilot Mountain (Nevada) — remain in pre-feasibility or feasibility stages with DPA Title III backing, meaning meaningful production from any of them before 2028 is unlikely (DoD press release, 22 Jul 2025). On the policy side, the Section 232 critical-minerals proclamation's 180-day negotiation deadline (13 July 2026) is the near-term catalyst to watch for whether the US moves from negotiation toward tariffs or minimum import prices on tungsten derivatives (The Fuse, 16 Jan 2026). On the demand side, continued NATO and allied rearmament, DLA stockpile purchasing, and steady cemented carbide demand from mining, construction and metalworking provide a relatively inelastic demand floor, while a resolution or easing of MOFCOM licensing (unlikely given tungsten's exclusion from the November 2025 truce) represents the main scenario for price normalization back toward the pre-2025 $250–380 per dmtu range.

Key risks: (1) geopolitical — further Chinese destination-specific restrictions of the type applied to Japan in January 2026 could be extended to other US allies; (2) execution — Sangdong Phase 2 and the DPA-funded North American projects all carry standard mine-development delivery risk; (3) demand destruction — sustained APT prices above $2,000/mtu could accelerate substitution research in cemented carbide (molybdenum- or niobium-carbide blends) even though USGS characterizes current substitutes as tungsten-reducing rather than tungsten-replacing (USGS MCS 2026).