Surging tungsten prices and tightening supply chains are pushing Australian projects such as EQ Resources’ Mt Carbine in far north Queensland and Group 6 Metals’ Dolphin mine on King Island towards higher output and accelerated development. Mt Carbine is ramping up from tailings retreatment to open-pit and underground ore, while Dolphin is restarting historic underground workings with a new processing plant targeting high-grade scheelite concentrates. For geotechnical and mining teams, the shift raises demand for hard-rock stoping, ground support in narrow, high-stress veins, and fine-tuning of gravity–flotation circuits for complex skarn ores.

American Ocean Minerals has deployed its 196‑foot research vessel Anuanua Moana as a dedicated deep-sea exploration and environmental monitoring platform across more than 500,000 km² of Cook Islands EEZ and US‑regulated areas, including AOM Area 1 in the Clarion‑Clipperton Zone and AOM Area 2 in the Penrhyn Basin. The ship carries advanced sonar, subsea tracking, a 6,000‑metre‑rated ROV, and onboard geology, chemistry and biology labs, and has already mapped a 23,500 km² licence in 16 days, supporting estimates exceeding 500 million wet tonnes of polymetallic nodules. Backed by a merger with Odyssey Marine Exploration to form a roughly $1 billion US‑controlled critical minerals company, AOMC has secured compliance for two Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act applications covering 1.4 billion tonnes of inferred resources, while collecting over three years of baseline ecological data for EIAs and feasibility studies amid strong environmental scrutiny.

Triton Uranium has started on-site development at its Atlas project in Uranium City, Saskatchewan, aiming to fast-track a near-surface, infrastructure-ready open-pit operation and is weighing a 2026 US stock exchange listing via SPAC, backed by nearly US$16 million in private funding. A 10,000-metre drill programme beginning June 2026 will test four priority zones, feeding resource estimates and a preliminary economic assessment later that year. The strategy targets compressed permitting and construction timelines versus typical decade-long uranium developments, leveraging historic workings and modern extraction and processing technologies.