Almonty Industries (NASDAQ: ALM) has agreed to supply Sandvik (STO: SAND) with tungsten recovered from a shuttered Spanish mine’s tailings as Western users seek alternatives to Chinese supply.
The tungsten will come from waste left at Almonty’s Los Santos mine in Spain and be supplied to the Swedish mining equipment maker’s Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG unit under a long-term agreement, the company said Thursday. The deal is structured on a take-or-pay basis.
“The agreement is intended to create an expedited tungsten supply solution with the ability to deliver concentrate in notably less time than the development of a traditional mine,” Almonty said.
The deal gives Sandvik another European source of tungsten as the EU and the United States seek to reduce reliance on China, which accounts for about 80% of global production. Beijing tightened export controls in 2025, adding urgency to efforts to secure the extremely hard, heat-resistant metal used in applications ranging from weapons to semiconductors.
Tailings revival
At Los Santos, Almonty plans to use specially developed technology to process existing tailings rather than resume conventional mining. The waste contains much lower grades of tungsten than newly mined ore, but surging prices and demand for Western supply have made reprocessing more attractive.
Spain holds Western Europe’s largest tungsten reserves, although efforts to bring new mines into production have been slowed by permitting hurdles.
Almonty has encountered those challenges at its Valtreixal project in Spain. It has held the mining licence since 2013 but is still awaiting permits to begin operations. A regional government issued a non-binding negative environmental assessment for the project in July.
The company’s flagship asset is the Sangdong mine in South Korea, which recently returned to production after being shuttered for more than three decades. Almonty also produces tungsten at its Panasqueira mine in Portugal.
Supply push
Europe has stepped up efforts to secure critical minerals as geopolitical tensions expose its dependence on concentrated overseas supply chains.
The European Union adopted the Critical Raw Materials Act in 2024 to encourage more extraction, processing and recycling within the bloc.
The European Commission included tungsten in its critical-minerals joint-purchasing plans in April, alongside rare earths, gallium, magnesium, germanium and graphite.
The Los Santos plan is being driven by tungsten’s price surge since China imposed its export controls and by demand from European consumers such as Sandvik for alternative suppliers.
Source: https://www.mining.com/almonty-to-supply-sandvik-tungsten-from-spanish-mine-tailings/
