The price of tungsten has risen to its highest level in nearly a century as the United States and Israel draw down their munitions stockpiles in the ongoing conflict with Iran. This heightened use of munitions is putting an immense strain on the supply of the mineral in the wake of China imposing restrictions on the metal’s exports.
On Rotterdam’s metal market, ammonium paratungstate, the intermediate compound from which processors extract tungsten, has soared from approximately $400 a ton 12 months ago to now in excess of $2,200, according to Shanghai Metals Market data.
Last February, China imposed restrictions on the export of tungsten as a retaliatory measure against the trade tariffs imposed by the U.S. China currently dominates tungsten mining, controlling 80% of global production. Exports of this metal from the East Asian country have since slowed by at least 40% in the wake of its export restrictions, tightening global supply.
To compound the supply woes, China reduced the production quotas of its producers and imposed stringent environmental regulations that pushed many smaller industry players out of the market.
While drill bits made from tungsten carbide can be recycled to retrieve and reuse the metal, the tungsten used in munitions gets destroyed when those munitions explode. The ongoing conflict in Iran is therefore burning through critical supplies of this metal as huge payloads of explosives are dropped onto targets in the country.
In 2025, the defense sector utilized about 10% of the global supplies of tungsten. This year, that share is expected to be much higher as countries scramble to restock the munitions they have burned through not just in Iran but also in other ongoing conflicts, notably that in Ukraine.
Analysts caution that the use of tungsten by the military is bound to squeeze out civilian applications of the metal, including its use in the production of printed circuit boards, semiconductors, solar panels, and other industrial uses.
Production of tungsten in the West is growing, and 2025 saw such production outside China increase by 20% to bring to market 19,000 tons. Boguty Mine in Kazakhstan was a major contributor to this non-Chinese output.
Many new tungsten mining projects are planned or are being developed. Enterprises like Collective Mining Ltd. (NYSE American: CNL) (TSX: CNL) are also conducting tungsten exploration projects in the Americas. As many of those projects come online, global supply is likely to become increasingly less dependent on supplies from China.
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