Almonty's Spanish Tailings Deal and Rwandan Expansion Redraw the West's Tungsten Map

Almonty signs take-or-pay offtake with Sandvik unit to reprocess Los Santos tailings in Spain, as US military sourcing ban looms in 2027.

Western defence planners have spent years fretting over a single, uncomfortable statistic: China controls roughly 80 percent of global tungsten supply. That reliance is about to collide with hard procurement rules. From January 1, 2027, US military buyers will be largely barred from sourcing the metal from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. The scramble for alternative supply is no longer theoretical — it is a deadline.

Almonty Industries is positioning itself on the right side of that deadline. The Toronto-listed miner has signed a multi-year take-or-pay offtake agreement with Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten, a subsidiary of Swedish industrial group Sandvik. The contract revives a project that has sat idle since February 2020: the Los Santos mine in western Spain, about 50 kilometres south of Salamanca.

At the heart of the arrangement is the reprocessing of historic tailings. At least 1,720 tonnes of contained tungsten trioxide are to be recovered from the old waste piles, with Almonty receiving a contingent one-time payment of USD 3 million for the offtake rights. For Sandvik's tungsten unit, the deal locks in European-sourced feedstock; for Almonty, it monetises material that has lain untouched for years.

The willingness of a major industrial buyer to commit to binding volumes from existing tailings says plenty about the mood in procurement departments. Security of supply now outranks short-term price optimisation. When defence rules narrow the list of acceptable origins, every contracted tonne outside China's sphere of influence becomes a form of insurance for Western manufacturing.

A Wider Footprint Takes Shape

Los Santos is only one piece of a broader repositioning. Almonty's production base rests primarily on the large Sangdong project in South Korea, which is also backed by long-term offtake commitments. In June 2026, the company bolstered its balance sheet with a USD 700 million convertible bond placement.

Africa is the other front. Under a binding partnership with the Rwandan government, Almonty holds 75 percent of the joint venture Almonty Rwanda, with the state taking 25 percent. Rwanda contributes the Shyorongi exploration concession and a mineral processing licence to the vehicle. Reuters has reported that the venture enjoys backing from a US economic framework — geopolitical cover that matters enormously for a metal classified as critical in Western economies.

The company is tidying its organisational house at the same time, consolidating its trading venues. Concentrating liquidity on the remaining listings can deepen order books, though it creates short-term adjustment work for international shareholders. A forthcoming special meeting is expected to deliver key resolutions on the group's future structure and the financing of its pipeline projects.

Market Verdict: Momentum Meets Caution

Investors have greeted the operational news with modest enthusiasm. The stock climbed 2.5 percent in today's session to EUR 12.61, giving Almonty a market capitalisation of roughly EUR 2.74 billion. The shares are up 58 percent since the start of the year, yet at a pre-market quote of EUR 12.51 they still sit about 39 percent below their 52-week high — a reminder that the re-rating has been anything but smooth.

The strategic case for aggressive expansion is compelling. Tungsten remains a prized industrial metal, and the entry into African assets opens considerable room to scale. Building mining and processing capacity in emerging markets, however, carries project-specific risks that no offtake contract can fully neutralise. The upcoming special meeting should offer the first signals on how cleanly that path unfolds.

With 2027 drawing closer by the quarter, the contest over critical minerals has stopped being a question of price alone. It is now a matter of national security — and producers with verifiable extraction and processing capacity outside authoritarian states hold the levers in a historic reordering of global supply chains.