In the world of critical minerals, few are as dense, durable, and geopolitically charged as tungsten. From its role in crafting armor-piercing shells to its presence in the tools that manufacture almost every object we touch, tungsten is an indispensable material. Yet, its supply chain is dominated by a single player: China.
In February China announced stricter export controls on tungsten. Since then prices have increased by 55% reaching historic highs of $500/MTU WO3 equivalent to $50,000 per metric ton of tungsten trioxide.
In this interview, I spoke with Will Parry-Jones, a veteran of the industry and the founder of Wolfram Advisory, a strategy consulting company focused on this niche but vital commodity. Will shares his insights on the recent dramatic price spike in tungsten, China's strategic export controls, and how the West is scrambling to secure its own supply. We also discuss the surprising ways this metal is adapting to the future of technology, including its role in the electric vehicle revolution.
Here's a breakdown of what you'll find in the full interview:
Tungsten's Unique Properties: Why its extreme hardness and melting point make it irreplaceable in defense and industrial applications.
China's Dominance: China accounts for approximately 83% of the world's tungsten supply, a dominance that dates back to the 1980s and was solidified by strategic industrial policy.
The Price Impact of Export Controls: China's recent export controls on tungsten have caused prices to jump by 55% this year, sending shockwaves through the market.
The Global Supply Landscape: Outside of China, the biggest producers include Vietnam, Russia, and countries in Central Africa and South America, many of which rely on artisanal mining. The conversation also explores new projects, such as the Sangdong mine in South Korea, which could soon become the largest tungsten mine outside of China.
Tungsten and the Energy Transition: While the move to EVs reduces the amount of tungsten needed per vehicle, new uses in battery chemistries and power infrastructure are creating unexpected new demand.
Tune in to our full conversation to learn more about this fascinating and increasingly critical metal.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Tungsten and its Importance
02:56 Tungsten's Unique Properties and Applications
06:05 Impact of China's Export Controls on Tungsten Markets
08:46 China's Role in Global Tungsten Supply
12:02 Defense Demand and Strategic Stockpiling
12:59 Geopolitical Dynamics and Supply Chain Risks
13:22 Future Demand for Tungsten in Electric Vehicles
16:22 New Projects and Production Outside China
19:25 China's Dominance: Geological and Strategic Factors
22:34 Vietnam's Position in the Tungsten Market
25:20 Conclusion and Future Outlook
Transcript:
Henry Sanderson: Will, thanks so much for joining me today. I wonder if you could start by giving a brief introduction of yourself and how you got into tungsten.
William Parry-Jones: Hi Henry, thank you for having me. I started off as a physical trader working for a company in the City of London. I did about 10 years working in commodities in what we used to call the minor metals, which are now more commonly referred to as critical minerals or critical metals. A large part of that business was tungsten-focused. At various points in my career, I’ve been involved in trading tungsten products throughout the value chain, including concentrate, scrap, intermediate chemicals, and some downstream products as well.
About six years ago, I moved to Vietnam to work for the largest non-Chinese tungsten producer, where I handled commercial topics, strategic procurement, and product sales. We also did tie-ups with other producers, taking their material and converting it. As of March of this year, I moved back to the UK and started my own consulting company, Wolfram Advisory Limited. It's been an exciting couple of months. I'm really seeing the markets get interested in this very niche commodity. Obviously, the price jumping up by 55% from where it started the year has helped, but it’s also a really interesting metal because of its exposure to defense and other areas that the U.S. is seeing as increasingly critical.
Henry Sanderson: Could you describe tungsten’s unique properties and what it's used for?
William Parry-Jones: Certainly. It's extremely dense, and I believe it has the second-highest melting point of any element on the periodic table, after osmium. In combination with carbon, we get something called tungsten carbide, which exhibits extremely high hardness. About 70% of all tungsten is consumed as tungsten carbide.
The way I like to describe it is that while you may not see many finished products that contain tungsten, almost everything you see and touch in the world today has been made with a tungsten carbide tool. All machining, drilling, milling, and turning operations are conducted with it. That pretty much means that anything made, whether for consumer goods or heavy industry, has had some interaction with tungsten along the way.
Henry Sanderson: You mentioned a sudden excitement in tungsten. China, the largest producer, cut exports in February. What's been the impact on the price and markets?
William Parry-Jones: It's been significant. To set the picture, this is a very small market, circa 150,000 to 153,000 tons per annum, measured in tungsten trioxide. It's smaller than tin or cobalt, but it's very important. As you said, 83% of the supply originates in China. For those of us in the industry, this is nothing new—China has dominated since the 1980s or 1990s. The surprise with the export controls is that many consumers outside of China were reliant on Chinese intermediate chemicals as a feedstock for their downstream production.
Why would this be a metal that China chose to restrict? About 10% of tungsten is consumed in defense, and it is more or less irreplaceable in that role. This is where its high density and hardness, along with its extremely high temperature resistance, come into effect. Things like armor-piercing tank shells, penetrator rods, and tank armor are all areas where tungsten carbide or tungsten metal are commonly used.
Henry Sanderson: Has China’s export control just encouraged producers outside of China to accelerate production? For instance, Almonty Industries is set to open the largest tungsten mine outside of China in South Korea. So, is it backfiring in the sense that it's just encouraging non-Chinese supply to get going?
William Parry-Jones: Yes and no. We've seen this in the past, where prices have increased for various reasons to a level where mines outside of China were able to get investment and come into production. What has typically happened is that the price has then been driven down, either deliberately or through market forces, and many of these mines have struggled to survive.
Could you argue that this export control has accelerated the development of new mines? Not yet. I think that's something we're going to see play out in the next 12 months. But there are projects around the world, like the one you alluded to in Sangdong, that are going to benefit strongly from this dynamic and price environment.
Henry Sanderson: In terms of China, I read that they've actually become a net importer of tungsten concentrates. So while they are the dominant producer, they're reliant on imports, is that right?
William Parry-Jones: That’s a challenging question to answer. We did see a very strong increase in the level of imports of primary raw materials—concentrates—in the run-up to these export controls. I would suggest that this was deliberate, that people within the industry were aware that export controls were coming and they wanted to further pressure Western industry by removing raw material sources that those companies could pivot to.
The other part is that a lot of tungsten units in the world today come from secondary supply. Outside of China, we have about a 50-50 breakdown between primary and secondary feedstock for the downstream industry. Inside of China, if you went back ten years, the recycling rate was very low, around 10%. That has grown rapidly and I'm led to believe it’s now somewhere in the mid-20s and heading upwards. The further they can push their domestic recycling rate up, the more secure China is from a feedstock standpoint. While they do import a lot of concentrate from the rest of the world, I think they could replace those imports with domestic production pretty easily.
The Chinese mines have been operating since the early 1900s, and the cost of production has gone up dramatically over the years. Grades have dropped, and the depth of the mines has increased, so as you would expect, OPEX has gone up. But the Chinese government has also been implementing Western standard controls on these miners for a long time, including health and safety and the use of digital tools. They’ve brought them up in terms of maturity and advanced nature, but it has also put pressure on their costs.
Henry Sanderson: So China is the largest producer. Who are the next biggest producers outside of China, and what percentage of the supply comes from China versus other producers?
William Parry-Jones: It’s a bit of a "who's who" of countries you really don't want to have to deal with, if you have the choice. Russia used to be a very significant producer, but because of sanctions and how Russia is viewed as a counterparty, many have moved away from buying material from there. I do believe that material still goes into China.
Vietnam, as I mentioned, is currently the second-largest producer. A lot of material also comes out of Central Africa—the Great Lakes region, Congo, Burundi, and DRC—as well as South America, from Bolivia and Brazil. I have to add that this production is mostly artisanal scale mining, not mechanized.
When we talk about new sources of supply, we're seeing projects looking to come online in Central and Southern Europe, as you alluded to, as well as in Korea and Australia. It’s not that there's an issue with the crustal abundance of tungsten; there are pockets of availability outside of China. It's just that production has never been successfully maintained at scale in those regions.
Henry Sanderson: There used to be much more production outside of China, and during the Second World War, it was considered a strategic commodity.5 Why did all those mines shut down? Was it because China started exporting cheaply in the 1990s as part of a strategy?
William Parry-Jones: I think you'd have to say it was. We're talking about extremely smart operators, businessmen, and a political system with the will to do something like that, so I would suggest yes, it was a deliberate move. And you're absolutely right. If we look back to the 40s and 50s, when there was an explosion in tungsten prices in relation to the World War, you had significant production in the domestic U.S., Portugal, and Spain. So there are certainly areas where we have good resources and grade that we can go and re-prosecute today if need be.
Henry Sanderson: In terms of defense, if the U.S. or the West is just looking to cover defense demand, do you think that's achievable?
William Parry-Jones: Yes, I do, but it will require a redistribution and a reprioritization of the supply chain. There is already legislation in place that restricts certain origins of material from going into defense in both the U.S. and Europe.
The U.S. had a strategic stockpile called the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which was built up in the 40s and 50s around the Korean War and had significant tungsten reserves. They were selling those reserves up until about two years ago, acting as a net seller of tungsten for the U.S. government to support their own domestic industry at the time. The DLA has publicly stated that they will be a net buyer from 2025 onwards. I think that for them is the question mark. It's less about whether we can sustain ongoing industrial demand for defense—I think that's possible—but can you do that while simultaneously replenishing your inventories while other countries are also considering doing the same? There’s been talk of a European critical mineral stockpile, so that's where I think things are going to get interesting.
Henry Sanderson: So what we've seen with rare earths at MP Materials is the Department of Defense providing a price floor. Almonty Industries also says they have a price floor for their contract. Do you think that’s a key way to combat China's dominance?
William Parry-Jones: I have mixed personal opinions on this. I think governments definitely need to be restoring a level playing field for Western mine production, but how they go about doing that is an open discussion. I'm not necessarily a believer that price controls are the right way. Almonty, with very good insight from its management, got a price floor implemented by a U.S.-based consumer. So there was no government influence in that; it was a commercial decision. They're probably thinking that price floor looks quite low in the current market, but for a long period of time, the rest of the industry looked on it as significant.
Various U.S. government agencies have been asking questions of the industry about price floors and price support. I could see something happening with the DLA or the Department of Defense in that regard. Given they’re replenishing those depleted stockpiles, I think I could see that being done at a certain price level that would support U.S. domestic production. There is one notable junior miner in the U.S. with assets that could be brought into production in the next three years, and a couple of other smaller players are looking at old mines in the U.S. to bring back into production as well. So, ostensibly, you could have a supply chain that was entirely U.S. domestic for the U.S. Department of Defense. I could see that happening.
Henry Sanderson: In terms of artisanal production in Central Africa, is it the case that China has an advantage because it will do things that Western companies wouldn't to access that supply?
William Parry-Jones: They have an advantage more so in their risk appetite, and that's less related to compliance and more related to the risks of doing business in, for example, Central Africa. There are stories of Chinese businessmen turning up to the mine gate with a briefcase of U.S. dollars. I don't think you'll find many non-Chinese companies or individuals with the same outlook on risk.
Within Central Africa, there have been compliance programs in play since the Dodd-Frank Act in and around the topic of conflict minerals. It’s a complex topic, but I think it's mature at this point, so people can make informed choices about buying from these regions and what's involved. They can then demonstrate that they are compliant. Similarly, in South America, for example, in Bolivia, there are now mature programs and an understanding of how to properly manage those risks. So, I think it's less about the compliance side and more about the risk side as to how the Chinese can be competitive in those areas.
Henry Sanderson: And do you see overall demand for tungsten rapidly increasing this decade, given the defense buildup in Europe?
William Parry-Jones: Defense, as we talked about earlier, is a relatively small end-use segment—about 10% of total tungsten consumption. The big question mark here is the transition from ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles to EV (electric vehicle) vehicles, a story you are very familiar with. Broadly speaking, to manufacture an electric vehicle requires about a third of the amount of tungsten carbide needed for an ICE vehicle. So there was a strong fear that as we had this transition, there would be an equivalent drop-off in demand.
That being said, we're now seeing new areas of tungsten use in electric vehicles that people hadn't forecast, and that are a stage or two removed from being a direct use in the manufacturing of the vehicle. For example, the copper cables in an EV—which I think have five times the distance of wiring as in an ICE vehicle—are drawn through a tungsten carbide die. So, the direct tungsten used in manufacturing the vehicle is less, but it's being touched somewhere else in that supply chain.
Another thing to mention is that some battery chemistries are being looked at that contain tungsten, and the Koreans are very far ahead with that research. There are also other ancillary tungsten uses in and around the power networks that would have to be developed for EVs to be rolled out, for instance, in manufacturing photovoltaics, DC high-power transmission lines, and electrical contactors.
This is a long way of answering the original question, but I don't think the outlook is that bad anymore. People were very worried five or six years ago. That being said, it's a market that tends to grow in line with global GDP, so this isn't a space race; demand isn’t going to suddenly double. We'll see it ticking along at about 3% per annum. The question is more where the supply will come from now that we have this big geopolitical rearrangement.
Henry Sanderson: If it doesn't come from China, supply outside China is going to struggle to meet that rising demand.
William Parry-Jones: Yeah, look, a mine takes between seven to ten years to bring on from discovery, and there really aren't that many high-quality assets in the pipeline right now. And remember, this is not an export ban, it's an export control. China is exporting material to countries it sees favorably; Japan and Korea have received tungsten shipments in the last couple of months, but the U.S. is certainly excluded from that. So you have to make a guesstimate for the supply-demand imbalance if you say China is not going to provide those materials to anyone in the West. If that's the case, I think you've then got a very real problem. Certainly in the short term—the next six to twelve months—we could see a significant upside in price.
Henry Sanderson: And that upside in price, presumably, will accelerate the projects under development?
William Parry-Jones: Absolutely.
Henry Sanderson: Where are you most excited about new projects? You mentioned the U.S. has some old mines that could be brought back, and there are projects in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Where are you most excited about?
William Parry-Jones: For me, it's more about how sustainable a project is over the long term. I'd like to see one that has a low cash cost of production, one that is competitive with where tungsten was before this export restriction in China. There are very few projects that tick that box globally right now. Everyone is waiting with bated breath, looking at Korea, because it has the potential to be a significant producer.
Also, in and around the CIS countries, there are a lot of very large assets that could potentially be brought on relatively quickly as well because the permitting environment is less restrictive than in, say, Australia, the U.S., or the U.K. There’s a huge project in Kazakhstan called Bakuto or Bogotty, depending on how you pronounce it, and I've seen evidence of a ramp-up in production and imports into China over the last couple of months.6 Unfortunately, it's a project that doesn't help anyone outside of China, but it's adding more pressure to their domestic oversupply situation.
Henry Sanderson: In terms of China’s dominance in tungsten, is it a geological factor—that they've got great deposits—or was it more industrial strategy with artificially low prices that created their dominance?
William Parry-Jones: It’s both. They’re certainly lucky with the deposits they have and the size of the resource. They’re also all clustered around certain provinces. Jiangxi province, for example, is the capital of tungsten in the world. There are lots of very high-grade mines all located next to one another there, so you get the clustering efficiency benefit that you see in a lot of these Chinese businesses like manufacturing.
And then, industrial policy, absolutely. We've gone from a period when I started my career, where I could list probably 30 to 50 producers that were exporting products in China, and now we're really only talking about four or five. So, there's been massive industry consolidation. Those players are also, in some cases, partially state-owned, so it's top-down planning and control that is delivering the outcome that we're seeing today.
Henry Sanderson: In terms of Vietnam, how has its production been impacted by tariffs and the uncertainty around Trump? Or is that Vietnamese supply available for the U.S. and Western markets?
William Parry-Jones: I think their geopolitical stance is one of "bending bamboo." They lean toward China when it benefits them and they lean toward the U.S. when it benefits them. I think there was a deal done very early on with Trump in terms of tariffs that means all of that Vietnamese production can go tariff-free into the U.S. But it's a business, and they sell globally. I don't think they have a specific agenda or policy to target U.S.-based consumers directly.
Henry Sanderson: I guess one of the biggest issues is that you have defense demand, which is small overall but could probably be met through various Pentagon support measures. But how do you actually get commercial companies in the West to not buy from China? Do you think China's export controls have created a business incentive not to rely on them?
William Parry-Jones: I would hope so. My personal belief is there will be a normalization with China at some point, whether it's pre or post-Trump's presidency, which I think is difficult to say. But I don't see this great division we're seeing at the moment lasting forever. That being said, I think from a supply chain risk perspective, people are now operating with their eyes wide open. Perhaps decisions that would have been strongly influenced by the CFO and the "bean counters" are now being pushed back on from a supply chain risk perspective. So, I think over the next three or four years until the end of Trump's presidency, we will see these supply chains develop in new ways, and I don't think they will backtrack to, "Okay, well, China's open for business again; let's just go start buying there."
Henry Sanderson: Great, well, Will, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been fascinating to hear your thoughts. You're an independent consultant in this space, so I recommend anyone who wants to learn more reach out to you, and I'll put your contact details in the show notes. Thanks so much for joining me.
William Parry-Jones: Thank you for your time, Henry. It was great to talk.
