Hard Work

Welcome to Hard Work, a regular newsletter from Almonty Industries. If this has landed in your inbox or you’re reading this online, it’s because I thought you might want a more candid view of what’s happening in tungsten and the wider strategic metals market.

This is the first edition of a fortnightly note for a small group of investors, customers, policymakers and industry people from my contacts list who understand that tungsten has stopped being the obscure industrial metal it was once assumed to be.

The purpose is simple: to say what I’m seeing in the market and, where I think it’ll interest you, in the wider world of business too.

This week: why nobody really knows where the tungsten price should be, Michael Dornhofer’s read on the China-West market split, the next supply squeeze I think people are missing, and a few things I’ve been reading outside the usual mining industry circuit.

Price discovery after 30 years in a cage

Here’s the chewy thing about tungsten prices: nobody really knows where they should be.

That sounds absurd until you remember that tungsten has not traded freely for about 30 years. For most of that time, China kept the price where it suited China. Western buyers built procurement models around low-cost supply, and everyone behaved as though that was the natural state of the market.

Now the market is trying to find its own level, and that process is going to be messy. Prices have softened a little recently because China’s smaller producers are under pressure and there was talk of government support. That made people think cheap Chinese material might start pulling the whole market down again.

I don’t see it that way. The Chinese domestic price only matters to Western buyers if they can get hold of the material. If export controls, quotas or policy decisions stop that material leaving China, then the Western market has to price what’s available outside China. That’s a very different calculation.

That’s what makes the next few years so interesting – and so uncomfortable. We are watching price discovery in a metal that the West forgot how to price.

Tungsten markets

Michael Dornhofer, ISBP – assessment as of 17 July, 2026

Since the beginning of 2025, tungsten raw material prices have risen roughly ninefold. The APT benchmark, CIF Rotterdam/Baltimore, opened that year at around $330/mtu WO₃. It now stands above $3,000.

The cause was regulatory. On February 4, 2025, China – which accounts for more than 80% of world tungsten production – brought tungsten under its dual-use export control regime. That effectively halted exports of tungsten raw materials and of most tungsten-bearing products. The shortage it created has not eased since.

Less widely understood is that China is now short as well. Beijing has cut the domestic mining quota every year for several years and concentrate is tight in China’s own market. The import figures tell the story: roughly 3,000 tonnes of concentrate in 2023, 6,400 tonnes in 2024, more than 10,000 tonnes in 2025 – and still climbing. In 2025, for the first time in its history, China became a net importer of tungsten.

Chinese domestic prices did fall some weeks ago, after political intervention. I would not read much into it. With exports halted, the Chinese domestic price and the Western price are no longer the same market, and a fall in one says little about the other. There are now reports that most Chinese mines are running short of quota and must reduce or stop production. I expect domestic prices to rise again, after the summer break at the latest.

Outside China the shortage is acute. Several downstream producers, tool manufacturers in particular, are running out of inventory. Western mines will not close the gap for several years. My view is that tungsten prices stay high over the medium and long term.

In coming issues I will look at tungsten applications – ammunition, and tungsten hexafluoride for semiconductor production – and at where supply might realistically come from.

Michael Dornhofer is founder of ISBP (Independent Supply Business Partner) in Graz, Austria. He has spent more than 20 years in tungsten, including 13 years at Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten, Sandvik’s tungsten business, and has worked as an independent agent and consultant to the tungsten and hard metal industry since 2019.

China is keeping the value at home

People keep asking whether China will let more raw material out again. I think they’re asking the wrong question. China spent 30 years building the downstream capacity that the West failed to build for itself. It was always going to use that advantage once it had it.

The West is now alert to the demands of defence and semiconductors, which is good, although rather late. But another potential risk is civilian industry: aerospace, automotive, mining, drilling, wear parts. If supply gets tight enough and recession starts to loom, watch how quickly governments decide Chinese finished product is acceptable in “non-essential” areas. That’s how reliance slips back in. Fastmarkets crunched the numbers on this.​

Defense demand has not fully arrived yet

Tungsten has been part of military supply chains for generations. What’s changing now is the scale of rearmament moving through the defense industry. The Ukraine conflict, with its heavy use of drones, is a case in point. You need tungsten to shoot down drones and you need tungsten to make drones. If a factory making them is buried under a mountain, you will probably need tungsten-tipped bunker busters to address that.

And I don’t think the demand has really hit yet. The big defense manufacturers are still building the capacity to make more munitions and systems. When those production lines are running harder, they will need more material. That is when the market will see what this new cycle means.

What I’m hearing

Tungsten-copper wiring – keep an eye on this. My bet is that tungsten-copper wire is one of the next supply-chain gaps people wake up to. It’s used across electronics and China is said to produce around 90% of it, with the West years behind in matching that capability. The odd thing is that it’s easy to stockpile and stores well. Wiring could be the next “how did nobody see this coming?” moment.

What I’m reading

Samsung made nineteen times more money and its shares fell

Obviously I have an interest in South Korean business news and this caught my eye. The BBC reports Samsung’s preliminary numbers for April to June: operating profit of about 89.4 trillion won – call it $58bn – against 4.68 trillion a year ago. Nineteen times, and among the largest quarterly profits any technology company has ever posted. But the shares fell almost 7%.

What’s interesting is to look at how the money was made. Samsung didn’t sell nineteen times more chips. Analysts say DRAM – the short-term memory – rose 44% in a single quarter, and NAND, the long-term storage kind, 53%, because AI data centres are absorbing memory faster than anyone can make it. So it’s really about monetizing scarcity. And the same shortage is expected to be eating Samsung’s own phone and television business, where memory is a cost rather than a product. Own the bottleneck and you charge everyone for it. Including yourself.

Berkshire Hathaway buys Taylor Morrison

Greg Abel’s first big Berkshire deal as CEO is a $6.8bn cash purchase of Taylor Morrison, the US homebuilder. The obvious read is succession: new chief executive, first major acquisition, Buffett blessing from the sidelines. What’s more interesting is that Abel expects to bring Berkshire’s site-built home building operations into a combined platform, which some read as a move away from Berkshire’s long-running decentralised model. For a company built on letting managers run their own shops, that’s worth watching. Read more.

PwC’s AI jobs barometer

PwC’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer is better news for humans than most AI doom sayers would suggest. It says AI-exposed entry-level roles are becoming much more likely to require senior skills such as judgment and leadership, while new tasks added to AI-exposed roles are more likely to rely on empathy, judgment and creativity. That makes sense. AI can produce more work, faster, but companies still need people who can spot weak logic, bad assumptions and plausible-sounding nonsense before decisions are made. Read more.​

Opinion

A couple of months ago, I said publicly that I would help credible tungsten competitors for two years.

That was self-interest. The West needs more producing tungsten mines. Customers need confidence that there is a real supply base outside China. One company cannot rebuild an entire market on its own, however much fun that would be. The response was educational. Nobody called. The only person who did eventually get in touch simply asked me for $5mn. My reply was: are you putting this on red or black?

That about sums up part of the problem. Western governments are now being asked to sort through a pile of critical-minerals pitches, and every junior miner says it has the answer. Some of them might. But most of them just have some lovely maps, brand logos and a very optimistic chairman.

The test is production. Can you finance it? Can you build it? Can you process it? Can you sign contracts customers trust? Can you deliver metal when the market needs it?

The West needs more tungsten projects and my offer of help still stands – but the clock is ticking.

In the media

NBC News went inside Almonty’s Sangdong mine in South Korea, looking at tungsten’s strategic importance to the US and its allies. It highlights that the US currently imports a significant amount of tungsten and how Almonty can help meet those demands.

Watch it here​

We’ve also amended our long-term offtake with Global Tungsten & Powders, the Plansee Group’s Pennsylvania powder producer, which has backed Sangdong since 2018. The term goes from 15 years to 21, total contracted volume rises 40% to 4.41m metric tonne units, and pricing improves 6.3% on every unit — adding at least $30m a year at current APT prices, and taking expected annual contract revenue to about $490m. As noted by Business Wire – and many others.

Drop me a line

Thanks for reading the first edition. If something here made you nod, swear, forward it to someone, or left you desperate to tell me what I’d got wrong, I’d like to hear it. Sensible feedback is welcome. Mild abuse may also be entertained, depending on my mood.

I’ll be back in your inbox in a fortnight.

Cheers!

Lewis Black