Almonty Industries: Sangdong Ramp-Up Begins With Concentrate Shipments, a Rwanda Sourcing Deal and a Sub-Market Price Reset in the GTP Offtake
Analyst/Investor Day at the Nasdaq, October 19, 2026
Sangdong moves from construction to ramp-up, with the offtake discount removed
Almonty management used its first investor day at the Nasdaq to declare that Sangdong, the Korean tungsten mine it has spent roughly 11 years bringing back, is now operating. CEO Lewis Black said the final operational permit has been received and shipments are being prepared. The company expects to reach nameplate design output and specification "within the next 60 days." Black was candid that early performance is imperfect: "Is the grade as good as I would like? No, but it never is in the first few shipments." He added that "everything has gone wrong and broken in ramp-up," which he called normal, and cited one gearbox failure caused by an installation error by Metso. A replacement was sourced in Korea within a day and delivered in two days, against a 100-day lead time from the vendor.
Phase 1 is sized at 640,000 tons per annum of ore, and Phase 2 is already in motion, with equipment ordering and underground planning started to take the mine to 1.2 million tons. Black said Phase 2 was designed into the original build as a spot-priced option on higher prices, supported by a Phase 1 hard-floor contract, rather than as a reaction to the current market. Output is expected at about 10 containers, or 200 tons, of concentrate per month, shipped in vacuum-packed one-ton bags. Black framed that against global concentrate production of roughly 196,000 to 198,000 tons. The company stressed that only 2 of the 10 mining areas at Sangdong are in the reserve base, and that a third has previously identified high-grade volumes. It also said it has too much ore on surface because mining began ahead of the plant, which it described as a good problem that nonetheless hurts efficiency.
The most financially meaningful disclosure concerned the offtake. The contract with GTP, which Black described as the largest midstream oxide producer outside China, was extended by 6 years. The price of that extension for GTP was an increase across the entire contract, and title now passes in the United States rather than Korea. Almonty also eliminated the additional discount that had been assigned to the Plansee Group offtake to secure the OeKB guarantee behind the KfW loan. Black said the company is now "priced right in the middle of the market." He was blunt on why this was possible: "If this was 3 years ago, there was no chance short of kidnapping their dog of getting this." He characterized the concession as a product of "almost panic for material." Investors should read this as evidence that the contract terms reflect a seller's market, which may not persist if prices normalize.
Black also said that with the final permit in hand, Almonty can now collect a Korean government subsidy that carries "no conditions," which he described as "just a large check." The team is expected to detail the amount, though it was not quantified in the session.
Rwanda: a sourcing workaround, structured at the State Department's suggestion
Chief Development Officer Guillaume de Lamaziere laid out a Rwanda joint venture that is new to most investors. Almonty will own 75% and the Government of Rwanda 25%. Almonty receives the Shyorongi exploration concession of about 32 square kilometers, a greenfield, and a processing license covering mobile tailings units that can process material from local license holders, mine operators and landowners. The government will introduce Almonty to local license holders, and Almonty has the right to acquire and upgrade ore at its other facilities. A central processing plant in Rwanda would come at a later stage. De Lamaziere said the idea originated with the U.S. Department of State. Documented, traceable origin will matter for the U.S. defense supply chain from January 2027, and Rwanda is the only African country among the 10 largest tungsten producers.
Black called the arrangement "a Band-Aid fix" for a market in which long-term mine supply is uncertain, but said results have exceeded his expectations less than a month in. He said the Rwandan government has told him that as of next month Almonty will be the country's largest concentrate exporter. The logic is that a sovereign partner gives small-scale miners a "home team" option against Chinese buyers. Black acknowledged Almonty pays more for the material, and that structuring a deal between a sovereign government and a U.S. company "took quite an undertaking." The company is looking to replicate the model in other countries with large small-scale mining sectors. Margins on bought-in material and the volume ramp were not disclosed.
Europe: tailings reprocessing as a permitting workaround, with a floor
Black said no new mine permits have been issued on the Iberian Peninsula in nearly 9 years, in his words "it's not that they say no, they just don't say yes." Almonty's response at Los Santos is to recover tungsten from tailings as part of a site reclamation it must undertake anyway. The process has worked in the lab and in a pilot plant but has not been proven commercially. Black was direct on the risk: "Who knows… we have a high degree of confidence that it will." The contract with a large European consumer includes a floor price, so on the downside Almonty reclaims the site without, as he put it, losing its shirt. Most of the costs have been covered by an up-front payment from the offtaker, which Black said was the first time that customer has done so.
If the process scales, management sees a new European business model. At Panasqueira, Mine Development Director Nuno Alves said there are about 4.2 million tons of tailings at roughly 0.25% WO3, with copper and zinc credits. Test work using Falcon concentrators, MGS and flotation is giving good results, including zinc flotation that the team had not expected to achieve. Level 4 at Panasqueira, which will sit at 120 meters depth, is in a drilling campaign of 14 kilometers using 3 rigs, with drilling expected to finish by the end of this year. Alves described Panasqueira, which is 136 years old, as the highest-grade and cleanest concentrate in the market, with no penalty elements.
Market view: a two-tier price, a firewall and structural deficits
Guest speaker Michael Dornhöfer, a former WBH executive who now runs the consultancy ISBP, gave the market backdrop. He said China's February 2025 dual-use export licensing effectively cut the West off from APT, oxide and metal powder, and that China simultaneously tightened its own mining quotas and curbed small and by-product mines, which caused a concentrate shortage domestically as well. Prices peaked at about $3,200 to $3,300 in both markets. In mid-April 2026, China released its first-half mining quota, and mines that had been unable to sell, even to affiliated companies, sold their stockpiled inventory. Chinese domestic prices fell to about $1,000, which is still historically high. Dornhöfer said the export license system acts as a "firewall" between China and the rest of the world. He added that Western buyers cannot find APT and oxide at any price: "It's not a question of price, it's a question of availability." He expects the intermediate shortage to persist until new conversion capacity comes online.
Dornhöfer said China was a net importer of tungsten in 2025 for the first time in history, drawing on sources such as Kazakhstan, Myanmar and North Korea. He also argued that China will not restore mining output, because tests indicate that tungsten used in fusion reactor plasma chamber walls becomes radioactively contaminated and must be replaced every 2 to 3 years, making it a consumable. China is therefore inclined to keep reserves, which represent about 50% of global known reserves against 80% of production, in the ground. He estimated that with China's mining output falling about 5% from roughly 80,000 tons, one or two mines totaling 4,000 tons of capacity must start up outside China each year just to offset the decline, before any demand growth. He also noted that growth is coming from non-recyclable uses such as defense, electronics, batteries and fracking, so primary mine demand will grow faster than overall consumption.
Black's own view was that the market is "decoupling" a free market from a subsidized one, so the true value of tungsten is unknowable. He expects prices to soften as the market normalizes once Chinese recycling matures in 5 to 7 years, and said this is why he wants to move downstream to keep capturing margin. He said new supply is not coming soon and that U.S. restrictions on Chinese, Russian, North Korean and Iranian material for defense use take effect at the end of this year. A reported effort to obtain a 3-year waiver was rebuffed by the White House, "correctly so" in Black's view, and he thinks only 2 major producers have a real plan for the switchover. He expects Europe to follow suit.
Downstream: an APT and oxide plant, and molybdenum as a second orebody
Almonty is moving downstream with an APT and oxide plant in Korea. Dornhöfer said the concentrate-to-oxide step is the bottleneck in Western supply, and that a plant tailored to Sangdong concentrate should deliver higher overall recovery. Korea is the largest per-capita tungsten consumer, and its electronics and battery industries need oxide rather than concentrate.
Operations superintendent Benjamin Byun said a molybdenum deposit lies about 150 meters below the tungsten orebody. A technical report was completed in 2022 on historical data, but the mineralization is a network of quartz veins rather than layers, so the company is drilling 26 diamond holes totaling 12,000 meters from the existing underground gallery. The company announced that 37% of this was drilled by June 2026, and it will update the technical report after completion.
Balance sheet, buyback and a reporting upgrade
CFO Jorge Beristain, who has been with the company for just over 4 months, said Almonty raised $800 million in his first week and held CAD 1.2 billion of cash at the end of the second quarter. Following share price weakness, the company announced a $300 million buyback aimed at limiting dilution from the convertible. Black said the stock is moving with the broader metals sector and that fundamentals have not changed. He argued that the cash position lets Almonty acquire assets while competitors struggle to fund projects in a bear market.
Beristain said the company will move to U.S. dollar reporting and U.S. GAAP with its fiscal 2026 results, and expects to become a large accelerated filer in 2027. It is building Sarbanes-Oxley controls, implementing NetSuite as a global ERP, and has appointed PwC as auditor. These steps are routine for a company of this size, but they will matter for index and institutional eligibility, and for credibility given Almonty's history of skeptical commentary from some junior-mining peers.
Montana and other open items
The Montana project, acquired in November 2025, has roads, water, nearby power and permits already in place. Steven Allen said the headquarters moved to Dillon, a town of about 4,000 people, about 20 miles south of the site, and that a small team with Panasqueira experience is working on planning. Allen declined to discuss timelines, tailings decisions or capital, deferring to Black, and none were provided. Investors should treat Montana as an early-stage asset with no disclosed schedule. Black also stressed that Almonty opposes tariffs, subsidies and government equity involvement, arguing that governments focus on procurement and that an offtaker as an investor "never ends well." That sits somewhat awkwardly alongside the Korean subsidy and the State Department-brokered Rwanda arrangement, though management characterized the former as unconditional.