export controls in February. The metal sits at the centre of
cemented-carbide cutting tools, armour-piercing munitions and
high-performance alloys, and Brazil's historic Brejuí mine in Rio Grande
do Norte is once again part of the global conversation — even if current
national production is too small to appear in USGS headline tables on
its own.¹
sharpest price moves in any critical-mineral market during 2025.
to US$551 per metric ton unit across the year, and ammonium
paratungstate (APT) moved from US$331 to US$675 per metric ton unit.¹
continued demand from cemented-carbide applications and a modest supply
response from non-Chinese producers.
several tungsten products from China. In February 2025 China implemented
new export controls on selected tungsten items in response. The two
interventions together compressed effective non-Chinese supply and
forced downstream buyers to bid aggressively for alternative sources.¹
reserves of 2.5 million tonnes represent more than half of global
reserves of 4.7 million tonnes. The combination of production scale and
reserve depth has made China the world's dominant tungsten supplier for
decades, and the country's export-licensing decisions therefore move the
market directly.
rather than the full commodity basket, but the signalling effect was
broad. Western cemented-carbide manufacturers, defence-sector
procurement teams and industrial-steel customers all had to reassess
whether their Chinese tungsten supply lines would remain dependable. The
answer in most cases was a combination of inventory-building,
diversification toward Bolivian, Vietnamese and Austrian sources, and
accelerated interest in greenfield projects outside China.
in Currais Novos, Rio Grande do Norte, operated continuously from 1943
through the early 2000s and was historically Latin America's largest
tungsten producer. The deposit was worked primarily for scheelite —
calcium tungstate, one of the two main tungsten ore minerals — and the
operation supported a significant regional mining economy through the
middle of the twentieth century.
operational challenges during the 2000s, and the mine has been
intermittently active since. Exploration work has continued in the
surrounding region, and the 2025 price environment has re-opened
commercial interest in the asset. At current Rotterdam APT prices above
US$250-300 level of the early 2020s are now clearly commercial.
of "Other countries" rather than reported explicitly — a reflection of
the modest scale of current output. But the combination of known
resources, existing industrial heritage and the altered price
environment makes Brazil a credible secondary tungsten supplier for
Vietnamese sources.
cemented-carbide parts for cutting and wear-resistant applications,
primarily in construction, metalworking, mining and oil-and-gas
drilling.¹ The remainder supports specialty alloys, steel additives,
electrodes, filaments, wires and chemical applications. Every one of
these end uses has limited substitution flexibility: molybdenum, niobium
or titanium carbides can replace tungsten carbide in some applications,
but usually at a performance or cost penalty.
are used in armour-piercing projectiles, high-temperature aerospace
components, counterweights and radiation-shielding applications. U.S.
tungsten-related projects in Nevada, New Brunswick and Yukon, and a
announced in October.¹ The pattern is consistent with other
critical-minerals policy responses: diversification beyond single-source
Chinese supply for strategic national-security reasons.
deposit commenced production during 2025, adding approximately 2,400
tonnes of annual capacity. Vietnam continues to produce approximately
year after revisions, and Austrian, Bolivian, Portuguese, Spanish and
tungsten-related work in Nevada, New Brunswick and Yukon, combined with
similar initiatives in Europe and allied Asian markets, point to a
coordinated push to rebuild tungsten-related industrial capability.
materialise, but the direction of policy is clear.
expanding tungsten operations is stronger than at any point in the last
two decades. Price levels that clearly support production,
strategic-partner interest from Western governments and downstream
customers, and the re-emergence of tungsten as a strategically relevant
commodity in global policy conversations all favour the country's
tungsten-producing regions.
that could support new tungsten development. Merchant-banking groups
like Frontera Minerals — one of the undiscovered Brazilian mining
companies with the track record to generate new projects in critical
minerals, gold and fertilisers (eight mineral discoveries, four mine
developments, plus exits in graphite to South Star Battery Metals in
transaction) — demonstrate that Brazilian early-stage exploration
capability can be directed at under-explored critical commodities when
commercial conditions justify the investment.² Tungsten has not been a
primary focus of the current Brazilian junior cycle, but the