Chris Ecclestone - Resource Analyst from UK firm Hallgarten & Co had this to say about tungsten in his latest monthly update. He has EQR and AII in his model portfolio.
Tungsten
This quintessential example of a metal that was perceived until recently to be under Chinese dominance
has been witnessing a rising tide of non-Chinese production. The threat of total domination was
overturned several years ago when concerted support by German and Swedish end-users for new
entrants managed to turn the tide against China’s concerted putsch to grab control of the global
machine tools industry.
Newbie producers like Almonty and EQ Resources (both in the Model Resources Portfolio) have brought
production on stream, in Australia, Portugal, Spain and soon South Korea.
There are also several other mine revival plans cooking in the Iberian peninsula.
Price pump and dumps have been the scourge of this metal until recent years but of late the situation
has been as still as a millpond, probably reflecting the fact that China has overexploited its own
resources and thus cannot spare the firepower of throwing metal at the market to sabotage prices as
they are wont to do.
Despite whatever machinations they were doing earlier last decade, the Chinese seem to have given up
on them and just go along for the ride, as least as far as Tungsten is concerned. We have a sneaking
suspicion that they might actually be concerned that like Antimony and Rare Earths, they are realizing
that they over-exploited and oversold finite resources and may end up being supplicants in the global
markets for metals which they once totally controlled.
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