Almonty's Sangdong Output Locked In as Washington Redraws Tungsten Supply Lines
Published on 09/22/2026 at 21:30 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Western manufacturers scrambling for tungsten outside China are finding few alternatives with actual tonnage to sell — and Almonty Industries is moving quickly to convert that scarcity into contracted revenue.
At the heart of the story is Sangdong, the company's South Korean project, whose first-phase processing plant is built to handle 640,000 tonnes of ore annually. More than 90% of that phase is already spoken for under a 21-year offtake agreement with Global Tungsten & Powders, a deal covering 4,410,000 tonne-units in total. That arrangement hands Almonty a fixed demand base just as industrial buyers across the West hunt for suppliers they can rely on outside the dominant Asian market.
A Rulebook That Rewrites the Map
Two US measures are doing much of the work. From 1 January 2027, procurement rule DFARS 252.225-7052 bars military purchases originating in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Separately, the Bureau of Industry and Security now requires American sellers of tungsten scrap to channel their monthly volumes entirely to domestic buyers by August 2027.
Those rules land on an industry with almost no room to manoeuvre. The United States has gone more than a decade without any domestic mine production, leaving defence contractors and technology firms little choice but to sign long-term supply contracts with partners they can trust.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Almonty?
The concentration problem is stark. Of the roughly 85,000 tonnes of tungsten mined worldwide in 2025, some 67,000 tonnes came out of China, according to US Geological Survey figures. Beijing has tightened the screws further by issuing export licences sparingly and only to selected operators, draining the pool of freely tradable material. For Western processors, supplier reliability has overtaken price as the deciding factor.
A Gap That Cannot Be Closed Quickly
The shortfall extends beyond raw ore. Analysts project a calculated supply deficit of about 16,000 tonnes for markets outside China by 2030. Bridging that gap is not a matter of months — new mines take years to permit and build, which hands a meaningful head start to projects already under construction.
Almonty's answer is a production network spanning three continents, rounded out by operations in Spain and a joint venture in Rwanda. Long-term supply agreements cover substantial portions of its output, giving management predictable cash flow to fund the build-out. The trade-off is equally clear: volumes committed to partners are volumes that cannot be sold into the spot market at peak prices.
Almonty at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.
Pricing Power Meets Contract Discipline
Outside China, tungsten concentrate has held between $2,500 and $2,800 per tonne-unit since late May, according to Fastmarkets. The broader market is expanding too — The Business Research Company estimates it will grow from about $6.66 billion this year to roughly $9.62 billion by 2030, an average annual pace of around 9.6%.
Investors have taken note. Almonty's shares are up 55% since the start of the year, trading at EUR 12.32, with attention now fixed on how consistently the company delivers on its production targets in the coming quarters.
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