"......with such credentials to become a global world player....

"......with such credentials to become a global world player. "

Thats a very interesting point you touch upon.....virtually all other significant minerals have many multiples of miners/producers all desperately trying to eke out a profit, compete with each other in the supply, chase down the buyers to secure offtake agreements and keep their fingers crossed they have significant resource in their respective spaces to have a lasting competitive position, or, hopefully, dominate amongst their peers vis-a-vis Pilbara.

The tungsten market is unique (sometimes not understood or sometimes misunderstood) and with 80% of resource in China, western sources are very scarce as are companies with both sufficient resource and expertise to work a resource profitably.

Tungsten (beit wolframite or scheelite) is quite rare compared to many other minerals.

Canada had the Cantung mine which was a big producer for the country and, after LOM, had intended to progress to Mactung but unfortunately got caught up with a lot of financial, indigenous, community and bureaucratic difficulties etc etc and are now basically not a producer.

The Iberian peninsula (Spain & Portugal) is another hotspot for tungsten and has been worked for more than 100 years by various companies at various mines, one of which is our Saloro owned Barruecopardo mine. In this same region Almonty have 3 mine sites; Panasquiera (Portugal - producing a bit) and two pre-production mines in Spain, Valtreixal (pre-feasibility) and Los Santos (care & maintenance).

Also in Spain is the W Resources owned La Parrilla mine which was/is financially backed by Black Rock but when the listed entity, W Resources, fell into financial difficulty it landed fairly back in Black Rocks lap - and unfortunately they are anything and everything BUT an company with tungsten mining operational expertise. By all accounts though, the plant they established at La Parrilla is "state of the art" in a similar vein as our own Barruecopardo.

So in short, Spain and Portugal have both a history AND a future in tungsten - it will get down to how the cards are dealt and who the players are.

Now lets get to Korea, and the Almonty (yes the same Almonty as in Spain & Portugal) owned Sandong mine which has a century plus old history of production. Sandong, like virtually all tungsten mines around the world, shut down in the 80's with the Chinese price manipulation and Almonty are now spending a motza trying to get it into production but unfortunately will not be achieving a meaningful level of production until well into 2025.

Vietnam has the Nui Phao mine which is owned and operated by Masan Hi-Tech, part of the huge and diversified Masan Group and with whom EQ Resources has a current MoU in place for sharing technical expertise and information to assist each other in their respective pursuits - this has, in fact, proven to be a very very good working relationship with huge mutual benefits.

Of much less worthy mention are two other recognised sources of tungsten which have both suffered severely in their attempts to resurrect tungsten production since the China price shutdown of the 80's - one is the Hemerdon mine (now Drakelands) in Devon in the United Kingdom which used to be a great producer for the WW2 effort and the other is the Tasmanian Dolphin Mine managed by Group6 Metals (formerly King Island Scheelite) which has for many years been lauded and applauded as the highest grade tungsten resource in the world but despite throwing a motza at this one they have so far been unable to get traction in the Bass Strait abyss and are probably on the verge of mothballing.

The USA has recently gotten very excited about their only known home grown tungsten resource in Nevada at Pilot Mountain but it also is years from production

So you can see that in terms of significant and known geographic locations of tungsten, there are VERY FEW.
And in terms of number of companies who are currently producing at a reasonably meaningful level, there are EVEN LESS.

We have all been hearing recently, in mining media, in financial media, in geo political media and in these HotCopper posts that China is on the verge of announcing major cutbacks of tungsten exports or perhaps even a complete ban, as they recently did with antimony.

Should this happen, tungsten prices of all the various products, from mined concentrates to refined powders, will rise to all time highs as was the case with antimony which had the share price of those companies who had any connection whatsoever to the mineral rising drammatically.

People all over the world will be asking the same questions " how can I get supply of tungsten ?" , "how can I get exposure to the rising tungsten price ?"

To get back to what SimoninCairns alluded to - there will only, and can only, be a very small handfull of players who will be in a position to take a dominant role in the market of this critical mineral.

With 3 mines of recognised and significant resource in 2 hemispheres and with a downstream FeW processing plant, EQ Resources are just setting sail to take advantage of what really does like like fair weather sailing ahead.

Hang in there ! Its happening !