By Robin WenData as of
Tungsten Suppliers: Countries, Not Companies
Tungsten supplier lists mix mine output, concentrate and APT. The only comparable ranking is the country table, and most producers publish no capacity.
On this page
Tungsten suppliers are easier to count by country than by company. Governments publish mine output for most producing nations; the companies that mine, convert and sell the material mostly publish nothing comparable. A tungsten suppliers list therefore ranks estimates, and has to say which number it is ranking. Tungsten manufacturers and producers inherit the same problem one level down.
What does a tungsten suppliers list actually rank?
Four measures get mixed together in tungsten supplier lists, and they are not interchangeable. The alumina suppliers page runs into the same distinction between capacity and output, and the suppliers index collects the rest.
- Mine output, in tonnes of contained tungsten. This is what the USGS publishes by country.
- Concentrate, sold on a tungsten trioxide content and priced per metric ton unit.
- Ammonium paratungstate, the traded intermediate that most converters actually buy.
- Carbide and metal powder, the products that reach a toolmaker.
A company can be large on one and absent on the next. A mine with no conversion plant sells concentrate; a converter with no mine buys it. Both are tungsten suppliers, and their figures do not add up to each other.
Which countries produce tungsten?
The USGS publishes mine production in tonnes of contained tungsten, with reserves beside it (USGS, tungsten). Data as of February 2026, reporting 2025 estimates:
| Country | 2024 | 2025 estimate | Reserves |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 67,000 | 67,000 | 2,500,000 |
| Vietnam | 3,400 | 3,000 | 170,000 |
| Kazakhstan | nil | 2,400 | NA |
| Russia | 1,500 | 2,000 | 400,000 |
| Korea, North | 1,900 | 2,000 | 29,000 |
| Bolivia | 1,700 | 1,700 | NA |
| Rwanda | 1,300 | 1,300 | NA |
| Australia | 920 | 1,000 | 570,000 |
| Austria | 840 | 840 | 10,000 |
| Spain | 700 | 800 | 66,000 |
| Portugal | 650 | 700 | 3,400 |
| United States | nil | nil | NA |
| Other countries | 1,700 | 2,400 | 950,000 |
| World total | 82,000 | 85,000 | >4,700,000 |
The American line reads zero for a real reason rather than a withheld one: the survey states that tungsten has not been mined commercially in the United States since 2015
, and prints a dash for both years. What is withheld, to avoid disclosing company proprietary data
, is consumption, industry stocks and secondary production. The United States therefore shows up in the table as a consumer with no mine, and the size of its demand has to be read through imports.
That arrangement explains the shape of a tungsten suppliers list. There is a demand centre with no primary production, one country with 67,000 of the world’s 85,000 tonnes, and a processing layer that buys concentrate, oxide, paratungstate or scrap and sells powder.
Who are the named producers outside China?
Two companies disclose enough to be named on a supplier page.
Almonty Industries operates Panasqueira in Portugal and brought Sangdong in Gangwon Province, South Korea, to first ore in December 2025 and to a commissioning ceremony on 17 March 2026. It also holds the Gentung project in Beaverhead County, Montana, and additional projects in Spain, and reported revenue of $32.5 million for 2025, expressed in Canadian dollars as the release specifies (Almonty, full-year 2025 results). It describes the demand it is chasing as coming from Western governments and defense customers seeking secure, long-term tungsten supply
.
Masan High-Tech Materials runs the Nui Phao polymetallic mine in Vietnam, which began commercial production of tungsten, copper, fluorspar and bismuth concentrates in 2014. Its tungsten chemicals plant began as a joint venture with H.C. Starck Tungsten, and Masan bought the remaining 49% in 2018 (Masan High-Tech Materials).
Nui Phao is worth pausing on for a second reason. Announcement No. 10 of 2025 put tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium under Chinese export control in one instrument, and that single mine produces two of the five.
Does Almonty’s 80% reconcile with the survey?
Almonty uses the same number against two different bases, which makes it a useful test case.
Its March 2026 results release says Sangdong is expected to supply over 80% of global non-China tungsten production
at full capacity. Its April 2025 investor deck says something narrower: ALMONTY POSITIONED TO PROVIDE 80% OF US TUNGSTEN DEMAND
.
The second one closes arithmetically. The same deck gives Sangdong an initial capacity of 2,300 tonnes a year doubling to 4,600, Panasqueira above 1,200, and total imports 7,230 t
into the United States. Those two capacity figures sum to 5,800 tonnes against 7,230 tonnes of imports, which is about 80%.
The first one does not close. The survey puts world mine output at 85,000 tonnes for 2025 with China at 67,000, leaving roughly 18,000 tonnes outside China; eighty per cent of that is about 14,400 tonnes a year. Almonty’s two named operations total 5,800 tonnes at the capacities its own deck describes.
None of that is a claim about intent. A company may mean new supply, or capacity rather than output, or a later phase. What a buyer can act on is narrower: the same percentage is only checkable when its base is written down, and the two documents write down different bases.
Who converts the material, and what do they buy?
The survey names no tungsten mining company anywhere in the chapter, but it does count the processing layer: seven American companies hold the capability to convert concentrates, ammonium paratungstate, oxide or scrap into metal powder, carbide powder or chemicals.
That is the layer most buyers actually touch. Its inputs are four different materials with four different prices, and it sits downstream of every mine in the table above. When the uses page says 60% of American consumption goes to cemented carbide, this is the layer that makes the powder that gets sintered into parts used in cutting and wear.
Where is China’s output split by company?
None of the sources read for this page splits China’s mine output by company, and the survey presents it only as a national total.
That absence matters more than it looks. A buyer told to “diversify away from China” is being told to leave a quantity that is larger than every other producing country combined, without a company-level map of who supplies it. The countries that could absorb the shift are listed above, and the two companies that disclose in any detail are named in this page.
How to read a tungsten suppliers list
Five checks separate a usable list from a decorative one.
- Which measure. Contained tungsten, concentrate, APT or powder. A list that mixes them is not a ranking.
- Which date. Mine output is revised. The survey revised 2024 production for Russia, and reserves for China and Vietnam, so a list without a date is not checkable.
- Capacity or output. Installed capacity is a plan; output is a fact. Tungsten disclosures lean heavily on the first.
- Mine or converter. They are different businesses with different inputs and different customers.
- What the share is a share of. If the base is missing, the percentage is not a claim a buyer can act on.
The grade and impurity side of the material sits on the tungsten page, and the rest of the material guides follow the same split between grade, form and supply, which covers the ten-kilogram unit, ammonium paratungstate and the licence conditions attached to it.
Methodology
Mine production, reserves, the world total, the American zero, the converter count, the import reliance and the import sources are from the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 chapter on tungsten, which reports 2025 estimates and carries a February 2026 publication date; the country table here reproduces its figures without adjustment. The survey withholds American consumption and industry stocks, not American mine output, which it prints as zero. Company details are from each company’s own disclosure: Almonty’s full-year 2025 results released on 18 March 2026, and Masan High-Tech Materials’ own company page, both read in November 2026. Both Almonty percentages are quoted as the company’s own wording, from two documents dated eleven months apart. The arithmetic on this page uses only figures the company and the survey publish; it does not assert which base the company intended. Two producers named in trade coverage, Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten in Austria and the Chinese majors, could not be verified from a primary source at the time of writing and are therefore not named.
Sources
USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Tungsten. February 2026. https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-tungsten.pdf
Almonty Industries, Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Results. 18 March 2026. https://almonty.com/fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-financial-results/
Masan High-Tech Materials, About us. Read November 2026. https://masanhightechmaterials.com/about-us/
Almonty Industries, Investor Presentation. April 2025. https://almonty.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Almonty_Apr_2025_InvestorDeck.pdf
Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs, Announcement No. 10 of 2025: export controls on items related to tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium. 4 February 2025. https://www.mofcom.gov.cn/zwgk/zcfb/art/2025/art_e623090907fc4e1092f0a4db72f57b95.html