Almonty Converts Spanish Mine Waste Into Cash as Sandvik Unit Signs On

Almonty locked a take-or-pay tungsten offtake with Sandvik's Austrian unit for Los Santos tailings, plus a USD 3.0 million upfront payment.

Almonty Industries has locked in a multi-year offtake agreement that turns dormant waste at its Spanish operation into a revenue stream, with a subsidiary of Sweden's Sandvik Group stepping forward as the buyer. The deal covers tungsten concentrate recovered from historical tailings at the Los Santos site, roughly 50 kilometers south of Salamanca, and calls for the delivery of about 1,720 tonnes of contained tungsten trioxide (WO?) over its term — close to one-fifth of the estimated tailings inventory at the property.

Structured as a take-or-pay contract, the arrangement also provides for a conditional upfront payment of USD 3.0 million in exchange for the offtake rights. The counterparty is Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG, the Austrian arm of the Sandvik Group, which operates the only fully integrated tungsten smelter outside Asia and Russia at Sankt Martin im Sulmtal.

Because the material already sits above ground, the project sidesteps the need for fresh open-pit extraction. Reprocessing legacy stockpiles is widely viewed in the mining sector as a more predictable route to incremental output, and Los Santos itself has been on care and maintenance since February 2020.

Rwanda Deal Adds a Second Front

The Spanish contract lands barely days after Almonty reshaped its African footprint. On Monday, the company signed an agreement with the Rwandan government to develop and process tungsten, granting the state a 25% stake in Almonty Rwanda Pty Ltd. Kigali's contribution consists of the Shyorongi exploration concession and an ore-processing license, while Almonty retains the remaining 75%.

Management had already moved on the capital side, authorizing a share buyback program for 2026 roughly a month ago. The board's approval covers the repurchase of up to 14,400,000 common shares — about 5% of the shares outstanding as of the August 14, 2026 record date.

Washington's 2027 Deadline Raises the Stakes

Broader supply-chain politics are lending urgency to the arrangement. Starting January 1, 2027, strict U.S. rules for defense procurement will bar tungsten sourced from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran all the way down to the mine level. That backdrop makes verified, non-aligned origins of critical industrial metals increasingly valuable to both corporate and government buyers.

Almonty frames the Spanish effort as its entry into commercial reprocessing of European legacy stockpiles. CEO Lewis Black has said the use of mobile processing units should meaningfully shorten permitting timelines, and the company is weighing whether to extend the same approach to its Panasqueira mine in Portugal and other European sites.

Analysts Cheer, the Tape Shrugs

Wall Street took a favorable view. D.A. Davidson reiterated its buy rating on Almonty and kept its price target at USD 33.00.

Trading has been less enthusiastic. In German dealing the stock changed hands at EUR 12.01 on Friday, a daily decline of 2.4%. Over seven days the shares are down 9.7%, though they remain up 52% since the start of the year. A separate reading put the year-to-date gain at 51%.

How quickly the Spanish reprocessing work ramps up — and how much profit the tailings recovery ultimately contributes — should become clearer over the coming quarters, even as the deal hands Almonty extra liquidity and bolsters the raw-material base for European processors.