Almonty featured in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)
FAZ is a major newspaper in Germany
Translated using ChatGPT
Mr. Black, what is tungsten used for?
The breakthroughs in artificial intelligence in recent years are due in no small part to tungsten.
Tungsten is used in many ways in special, high-performance AI chips — for example, as a contact and interconnect material.
Through chemical vapor deposition, tungsten hexafluoride is converted into thin metallic tungsten layers that serve as contact plugs and local connections.These tungsten structures are extremely small — in the nanometer range — and connect various chip layers with one another.
Because of its high melting point (3,422°C) and its thermal stability, tungsten enables reliable chip performance even at high temperatures and current densities.
Producers of raw materials like tungsten, which play a role in the current trade conflict between the U.S. and China, are now stock-market stars. Almonty’s share price has increased tenfold this year.
We simply have more visibility now. When China started imposing export restrictions on tungsten, financial markets first asked, “What is tungsten, anyway?” — and then they discovered us.
Now there’s a kind of tungsten diplomacy between different governments, because the material is so scarce.
The markets have realized that without tungsten, many industries can’t function — you can’t build cars or airplanes, drill for oil, or operate nuclear power plants. Tungsten is also indispensable in the defense industry.
How big is the market for tungsten?
Depending on the source, between 83,000 and 98,000 tons of tungsten are produced annually, with almost 90% coming from China, Russia, and North Korea.
About half of that production is consumed again within China.
Outside China, the U.S. is the main market, using around 10,000 tons per year, which is expected to rise to 12,000 tons in the short to medium term due to increased defense spending.
Europe consumes about 8,000 to 9,000 tons per year.
You are about to open a tungsten mine in South Korea. How important is this project for you and for the industry?
It’s a gigantic project. It will be the largest tungsten mine since the one opened in Mittersill, Austria, in the 1970s — and the second-largest tungsten processing plant in the world.
(The largest, recently opened in Kazakhstan, is controlled by the Chinese government.)
We plan to start production in South Korea this year.
In the first phase, we’ll process 640,000 tons of tungsten ore annually, quickly expanding to 1.2 million tons per year, which will be sustained long-term.
A tungsten facility like that doesn’t go into production every day — and it was developed during a time when ESG still mattered.
Right — ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance standards) used to be a major topic, but that has faded lately.
Many customers are loosening their sourcing standards, because nearly 90% of tungsten comes from China, Russia, and North Korea.
When they can’t get it from there, they turn to places like Myanmar or the Democratic Republic of Congo — which are considered conflict regions, anything but ESG-compliant.
I just spoke with a customer who said he wanted to relax his standards, and I told him, “Great — buy from Myanmar, where the military junta drops bombs on villages.”
It’s disappointing how some people have thrown their moral compass overboard. They used to be strict about ESG — but once they face the realities of free markets, morality disappears.
What is the reality of free markets in your case?
That production itself has intrinsic value.
Many customers don’t want to pay market prices — only subsidized prices (either through U.S. government support or by buying from conflict regions).
Do you already have contracts for your full Phase 1 production in Korea?
No, we’ve left that open for now.
We’re under pressure from the U.S. government, which wants to fill a material gap in its defense industry.
The EU also has initiatives to accelerate critical raw material projects, but neither the U.S. nor the EU has a true long-term program to secure supply chains.
In the U.S., directives often come directly from the White House as executive orders, while the EU is its own kind of “monster” when it comes to creating solutions.
In what way is the U.S. government pressuring you?
We can basically fill the 1,200–1,500 ton gap for defense materials from our mines in Portugal and Korea.
The question is how to structure the cooperation.
Right now, it’s fashionable for the government to take equity stakes in raw-material companies.
But that’s not in our interest — and not in theirs, either.
So the U.S. government wants a stake in your company — like they’ve done with rare-earth or lithium companies and Intel?
That seems to be the solution they’re offering everyone these days.
But we don’t need the money, and we can supply the government with tungsten without that.
We don’t need government ownership for credibility — we already have it.
The government seems to view it like an investment firm, thinking that an ownership stake will help companies raise more capital.
But we don’t have that problem — our projects are already fully financed.
Has the government made a concrete offer to buy a stake?
We’re a publicly listed company, so I can’t comment on that.
But since they’ve talked to everyone, you can imagine they’ve also spoken with us.
Still, we don’t see the logic behind it.
But your stock price would probably skyrocket if you announced a government investment.
It might — but it could just as quickly crash once investors realize what it means to have the U.S. government as a shareholder.
What’s wrong with that?
It’s not about right or wrong — it’s about conflicting interests.
My interests align with shareholders because I’m a shareholder myself: we want the company to make money.
The government doesn’t care about profit — it wants raw materials.
It would be like having an activist investor, except you can argue with an activist.
You can’t argue with the U.S. government — it’s the biggest hammer in the world, and it pulls all the strings with its 10% stake.
So you prefer to stay independent?
Yes. My independence has always helped create value in this company.
I’ve never taken on financial investors who extract value for a headline, and I won’t start now with the U.S. government.
People have told me, “Take the deal — the stock will explode.”
But I’m not chasing a spike; I’m building long-term value.
That’s why we’re 20 times larger than other tungsten companies — the market takes us seriously.
Would government ownership also make you look more like a defense company?
Imagine one of my customers wanted to buy Almonty.
If the U.S. government held a 10% stake, it could block the deal or overrule the other 90% of shareholders.
I’m not saying I want to sell — but I want to keep my options open.
I can still give the government what it needs — but as a supplier, not as an owner.
So the government could become a kind of poison pill?
Exactly.
Political winds change — a future administration might hate mining, yet would still be a shareholder.
That would make my life hell.
You’re moving Almonty’s headquarters from Canada to the U.S. Why?
For several reasons.
Our primary stock listing will move from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) to the Nasdaq in New York.
There are also tax advantages, as U.S. corporate tax policy keeps improving.
And in times of growing resource nationalism, being based in the U.S. is a kind of shield.
A shield?
Yes — much more so than Canada.
The U.S. government wields the hammer when problems arise.
I’m not saying trouble is coming, but I’m preparing for it — you never know what some governments will do when materials become scarce.
If the U.S. is securing raw materials so aggressively, doesn’t that increase Europe’s risk of being left empty-handed? Can Europe learn from the U.S.?
The main reason the EU lacks a “hammer mentality” is its structure — 27 member states rarely agree on anything.
Few mining projects have been approved in resource-rich countries like Spain or Portugal.
I think Europe will rely more on the U.S., buying finished goods that already contain critical raw materials.
That’s not necessarily bad — most of my European customers already have factories in the U.S., betting that they can use the materials Trump secures domestically and then export finished products back to Europe.
So in a way, Europe lets Trump do the heavy lifting — and profits from it.
Does that mean supply chains will shift more toward America?
Just look at Rheinmetall — it’s expanding in the U.S. because it realizes it has better access to raw materials there than with coffee and croissants in Europe.
What would you recommend to European governments?
They could, for example, channel funds through third parties like banks, which would evaluate projects more neutrally.
In the U.S., JPMorgan Chase recently announced a $10 billion investment program across AI and strategic raw materials — likely inspired by the government, but signaling a shift away from direct state ownership.
Jamie Dimon didn’t just come up with that over breakfast.
You’re much more in the spotlight now than before. Are there downsides to that?
Definitely. It used to be easier to operate behind the scenes.
Now we’re in a situation we’ve never experienced — people even came to take photos of our Korean facilities during a national holiday, so we had to cover them up.
We have many proprietary technologies.
So you’ve had to increase security?
Yes.
Recently we obtained aerial photos of a Chinese-operated mine in Kazakhstan, showing a plant that looked suspiciously similar to ours in Korea.
It could be coincidence — but I’d bet it’s not.
We even had to disconnect our Korean project from the cloud due to so many cyberattacks.
It’s absurd, but our technology is very valuable to many people.
We don’t feel entirely comfortable in this new role.
We just mine tungsten — but we’re good at it.
An indispensable metal — exceptionally hard and heat-resistant
In the ongoing global raw materials conflict, tungsten plays a major role.
Like the rare earth elements, tungsten is critical in many industrial products.
Its exceptional hardness and heat resistance make it almost irreplaceable.
China is one of the world’s key producers and has imposed export restrictions on tungsten.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense no longer buys tungsten products from China, Russia, or North Korea.
Lewis Black, a British entrepreneur, founded Almonty in 2011 after years of experience in the raw materials industry.
Today, the company is one of the most important non-Chinese tungsten producers.
Black first acquired production facilities in Portugal and Spain, and in 2015 added the Sangdong Mine in South Korea — Almonty’s largest project to date.
The German KfW bank is among its financiers, and production is expected to start in 2025.
The company, currently based in Canada, is moving its headquarters to the U.S., and its market capitalization has increased tenfold this year to around 3 billion Canadian dollars, benefiting from the U.S.–China trade conflict. |
