Elmet Group Signs Eight-Year Tungsten West Offtake for 1,000 Tonnes of Tungsten Concentrate Annually

Highlights

• Elmet Group and Tungsten West signed a binding eight-year offtake agreement covering more than 1,000 metric tonnes per year of tungsten concentrate from Hemerdon mine in Devon, England.
• Tungsten West estimates an indicative nominal contract value exceeding £1.4 billion based on prevailing European APT prices, though actual revenue depends on market conditions and delivery volumes.
• The UK National Wealth Fund has committed up to £71 million to the project, and the UK government secured rights to procure up to 50% of projected production.
• China produced an estimated 79% of global mined tungsten in 2025, making Hemerdon's non-Chinese, NATO-country supply pathway strategically significant for Western industrial policy.
• Full-scale production at Hemerdon is targeted for end of Q1 2027, shifting investor focus from resource potential to operational execution and customer qualification.

A British mine is being wired into an American industrial supply chain. The Elmet Group (opens in a new tab) (NASDAQ: ELMT) has signed a binding eight-year agreement with Tungsten West plc (AIM: TUN) (opens in a new tab) covering more than 1,000 metric tonnes per year of tungsten concentrate, measured on a tungsten trioxide (WO₃)-equivalent basis, from England's Hemerdon mine (opens in a new tab). The agreement creates a potentially important UK-to-U.S. tungsten corridor as Western governments race to reduce dependence on China.

Hemerdon Mine

Source: Wikipedia

Using the headline figures, Tungsten West's more than £1.4 billion indicative eight-year value across 8,000 metric tonnes of contracted contained WO₃ implies approximately £175,000 per metric tonne, or £175 per kilogram of contained WO₃. This is an implied value—not a disclosed fixed contract price—because actual revenue will depend on European ammonium paratungstate (APT) prices, foreign exchange rates, product specifications, quantities delivered, and the agreement's pricing mechanism.

REEx Insight — The Mine Matters. The Route Matters More.

This is Great Powers Era 2.0™ industrial policy becoming physical infrastructure. China produced an estimated 79% of global mined tungsten in 2025—67,000 of roughly 85,000 tonnes—and remains dominant in downstream processing, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Rare Earth Exchanges® (REEx) has repeatedly warned that Western vulnerability extends beyond geology across the chain: mine → concentrate → APT → powder/carbide or metal → qualified component. That makes Hemerdon more strategically valuable when connected to Elmet's allied refining network and downstream U.S. and German manufacturing. The real asset is not simply tonnage. It is an increasingly traceable non-China pathway from mine to manufactured product.

That matters during the Transition Vulnerability Window™: Western investment and demand for secure material are moving faster than fully integrated, commercially qualified ex-China capacity.

£1.4 Billion—With an Asterisk

Tungsten West estimates an indicative nominal eight-year value exceeding £1.4 billion, based on prevailing European APT prices and exchange rates. That is not guaranteed revenue. Hemerdon must also execute. Full-scale production is targeted for the end of the first quarter of 2027. Separately, the UK National Wealth Fund has committed up to £71 million, while the UK government has secured an exclusive negotiation period to procure up to 50% of projected production.

For investors, the story now shifts from resource potential to execution: ramp-up, refining, allocation, and customer qualification.

Tungsten West — Company Profile

Tungsten West plc (opens in a new tab) (AIM: TUN) is a UK mining development company focused on restarting the Hemerdon tungsten and tin mine in Devon, southwest England, which it acquired in 2019. Hemerdon is a fully permitted brownfield operation with substantial existing infrastructure and approximately US$300 million of previously invested capital. The project contains a Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC)-compliant resource of 327 million tonnes grading 0.12% tungsten trioxide (WO₃) and 0.03% tin, including reserves of 70.7 million tonnes grading 0.15% WO₃ and 0.03% tin. Tungsten West describes Hemerdon as one of the world's largest known tungsten resources, containing approximately 39.7 million metric tonne units (mtu) of WO₃.

The investment thesis centers on restarting an existing mine rather than developing a greenfield project. Tungsten West plans approximately US$93 million of pre-production capital and operating expenditure to rebuild the front end, introduce ore sorting and inline pressure jigs, recover ultrafines, and refurbish the existing processing plant—changes designed specifically to address the throughput and recovery problems that contributed to previous operator Wolf Minerals' failure. The company targets approximately 3,320 tonnes of contained WO₃ annual steady-state production, alongside tin and premium aggregates. Its June 2025 feasibility study calculated a post-tax real net present value (NPV) of US$190 million at US$400/mtu tungsten; using the much higher January 2026 market price of US$1,313/mtu, management's model increased that NPV to approximately US$1.69 billion. These higher-price economics are illustrative rather than guaranteed.

Hemerdon's base plan provides an 11-year primary mine life, while Tungsten West sees potential for roughly 40 years through resource conversion, pit extensions, and its "Hemerdon Futures" program; those extensions would require additional permitting and waste/tailings capacity. Strategically, the project offers something increasingly scarce: a potentially large-scale non-Chinese source of tungsten inside a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) country. Tungsten West estimates Hemerdon could represent roughly 4.1% of global production using 2023 production as the comparison base.