Tungsten crunch and BMO outlook: long‑term supply and project signals for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Tungsten prices have jumped from about $300/t to roughly $1,775/t for ammonium paratungstate in a year as Chinese exports, including APT, collapsed to near zero in late 2025 and global inventories ran critically low, BMO’s George Heppel and Helen Amos report. With China still supplying around 75% of the market and facing ore grade decline, tighter environmental controls and export restrictions, BMO expects another deficit in 2026 and sees only modest near‑term relief from artisanal mining and limited recycling growth. The bank argues that sustained prices well above historical norms will be needed to finance new mines such as Dahutang and stabilise long‑term supply for manufacturing, mining and defence.
Technical Brief
- BMO outlines five specific rebalancing mechanisms: Chinese mine expansion, ex-China projects, artisanal output, recycling, demand destruction.
- Dahutang in China is singled out as a potential large-volume addition, but only over the medium term.
- Artisanal mining currently supplies about 6% of global tungsten and is expected to grow modestly with price.
- Recycling growth is seen as most feasible in China, contingent on new collection and processing infrastructure investment.
- Western markets are assessed as having limited headroom for higher tungsten recycling rates in the near term.
- Demand destruction is expected mainly via reduced consumption rather than material substitution, given tungsten’s limited replaceability.
Our Take
With tungsten prices up fivefold and China supplying 75% of the market, the Dahutang project in China effectively reinforces Beijing’s leverage rather than diversifying supply, so non‑Chinese users in the US and Australia will likely need alternative projects or recycling to reduce exposure.
BMO’s recent commentary across copper and other base metals in our database stresses supply tightness over demand as the main price driver; tungsten’s current squeeze fits that pattern and suggests that even modest new non‑Chinese capacity could have an outsized impact on price stability by 2026.
Only a small share of global tungsten comes from artisanal mining (6%), which contrasts with higher artisanal dependence in some gold supply chains in our coverage and implies that policy or ESG interventions to ease tungsten shortages will focus more on permitting and project development than on formalising informal miners.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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