PEAK ASSET: MORNING WRAP 13 February: ASX 200 futures are pointing down 49 points or 0.6 per cent to 8924 | ASX to fall amid Wall St selling | The race to supply American tungsten is on as China-US tensions mount |

The race to supply American tungsten is on as China-US tensions mount

• Tungsten prices have gone haywire sending producers’ share prices soaring
• But the next generation of ex-China producers could come from the hot US market
• We profile a number of ASX stocks aiming to bring America’s forgotten tungsten mining industry back to life

Chinese export controls on critical minerals led to a surge of investor interest and price increases across a host of previously obscure commodities in the past two years, led initially by antimony and then rare earths.

A key link is their use in high-performance military applications – casing artillery, infra-red sensors, night vision goggles, drones, F-35 planes and more.

Bubbling under the surface was another metal with military applications that evaded market attention for much of 2025.

But now, as a record price run continues into 2026, tungsten is on the lips of just about every speculative small cap investor.

China first launched export controls on the metal – the hardest known to man with the highest melting point of 3400C – in February last year.

Tungsten is generally mined from minerals wolframite and scheelite before processing into an intermediate product called ammonium paratungstate. From there it is converted into powders like tungsten carbide then downstream products used in military projectiles, aviation, cutting tools, lighting filament, oil and gas drill rigs and more.

China produced ~79% of the world’s mined tungsten in 2025, according to the US Geological Survey. But it’s also the world’s top importer of tungsten ores and concentrates – the port of call for ore mined in Russia, Kazakhstan and Myanmar.

That puts its control of the market closer to 90%, presenting a challenge for powder producers in a Western world vulnerable to the Middle Kingdom’s near monopoly.

Tungsten price soars

APT (ammonium paratungstate) prices have surged from around US$300/mtu – a unit of measurement equivalent to 10kg – in early 2025 to over US$1500/mtu in recent days according to Fastmarkets.

The handful of ex-China producers who are traded publicly have been on a tear. EQ Resources (ASX:EQR), which operates the Barruecopardo mine in Spain and Carbine in Queensland, has surged ~490% in a year and ~30% in just the past week to claim a +$1bn valuation.

EQ boss Craig Bradshaw, who previously oversaw the construction of the largest tungsten mine outside the Middle Kingdom – Nui Phao in Vietnam – said on a podcast this week that talking to North American customers had shown many had a supply backlog of up to four months with powder producers, with some inquiring upstream about securing concentrate directly.

C$5bn capped Almonty Industries (ASX:AII), which recently reopened of the Sangdong mine near Seoul in Korea – projected to be around 20% of non-Chinese supply – is up 456% in the past year.

But its production is accounted for, with all of the offtake to head to major shareholder, Austrian processor and toolmaker Plansee Group.

While the military market represents under 10% of tungsten demand, it’s a key vulnerability for the US, which shut its last tungsten mine in 2015 but still has seven companies who convert tungsten into powder from concentrate and scrap. By the start of next year it will ban tungsten imports from China for defense procurement.

That puts the US in a particularly precarious position, and it’s spurred a new generation of ASX explorers hoping to bring America’s domestic tungsten supply back to life.

Source: Stockhead