NSW Tungsten Plays Heat Up as China Tightens Supply

A single point separated the Roosters from the Knights in Sunday's grand final. The tungsten market tells a similarly tight story, and it's playing out almost entirely in New South Wales.

Ten years ago, tungsten oxide concentrate—the form traders call APT—sat around US$300 per metric ton unit. The metal barely registered on most investors' radar. Then, in February 2025, China, which controls roughly 80 percent of global supply, began tightening export licenses. NATO countries started restocking strategic reserves. The drone age arrived, and militaries discovered that loitering munitions require materials you cannot manufacture from intention alone. Prices moved north of US$3,000 per mtu. A commodity that spent a decade in the shadows became impossible to ignore.

Tungsten's defining characteristic is hardness. It has the highest melting point of any metal, sits nearly as hard as diamond, and appears in the tip of every armor-piercing round and precision cutting tool that matters. The metal's personality—stubborn, uncompromising, essential—mirrors the character of the state where three interesting projects are now taking shape.

Sky Metals, listed on the ASX under the ticker SKY, is the most established of the three. The company's Tallebung project, about 70 kilometers northwest of Condobolin, began as a tin story. Tungsten arrived quietly, then moved to the center of the narrative. A July resource upgrade outlined 32.7 million tons of ore containing 36,800 tons of tin, 1.14 million metric tons of tungsten oxide, and a maiden 9.94 million ounces of silver. The prefeasibility study that followed described a three-million-ton-per-year open pit operation with capital expenditure of A$139 million, an internal rate of return of 69 percent, a net present value of A$438 million, and payback within 17 months. First production is targeted for mid-2028. What distinguishes the project is the quality of tungsten emerging from drilling. Diamond holes have revealed coarse wolframite—the primary tungsten ore mineral—and rock chips from Theirman Mines, about 20 kilometers away, returned assays as high as 7.44 percent tungsten oxide. The managing director, Oliver Davies, has made clear that tungsten is no longer a byproduct; it is becoming central to the economics.

Firestone Metals, an unlisted company, holds the Attunga project 20 kilometers north of Tamworth, mostly on freehold land with power, rail, and water nearby. The company claims the highest-grade tungsten resource in New South Wales: 1.23 million tons at 0.61 percent tungsten oxide, containing about 7.5 thousand tons of contained metal. The resource is not large, but grade matters enormously when the commodity commands current prices. Gravity processing—a simpler, lower-cost extraction method—appears viable, and preliminary work suggests an untested extension could stretch the mineralized strike from 100 meters to 500 meters. The team carries weight. Paul Newling spent 35 years designing and commissioning tungsten plants. Martin McQuade was formerly CEO of Tungsten Mining Group. In junior exploration, people who have actually built operating plants are worth more than any three-dimensional block model. A third license, Minter, sits in the Wagga Tin-Tungsten Belt between Tallebung and Ardlethan, meaning Sky and Firestone could eventually become neighbors.

ABC Commodities, also unlisted, operates three projects across New South Wales. The most compelling is Marks Hill, 90 kilometers southwest of Bathurst, a 15-kilometer trend containing four wolframite occurrences including the old Marks Hill mine, where historical production grades were estimated near 1 percent tungsten oxide. The first target is Reid's Flat, an outcropping greisen roughly 180 meters by 40 meters, where surface sampling has averaged 0.5 percent tungsten oxide. A ten-hole reverse-circulation drilling program is planned to test the body at depth. This is pure exploration—none of the numbers carry JORC certification—so it reads as a discovery bet rather than a resource story. If the greisen holds at depth, the project becomes materially more interesting. Two additional properties, Crystal Ridge on the Mid North Coast and Woodlawn East adjacent to Develop's operating Woodlawn mine, add copper, tin, gold, and zinc to the portfolio.

Tungsten is not a temporary phenomenon. China's control of supply shows no sign of loosening. Western governments are committing capital to strategic reserves and domestic production. New supply takes years to build. The established producers have already been revalued. If a next leg of investment emerges, it will likely focus on mid-stage projects still proving their resources—which is precisely where the risk concentrates as well. The gap between favorite and challenger can be one point, and both can deserve to win. The tungsten space feels much the same: back the highest grades, back the people who have actually built plants before, and understand which stage of development you are entering.