Almonty–Sandvik tungsten from Spanish tailings: supply and risk lens for mine planners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Almonty Industries has signed a long-term take-or-pay deal to supply Sandvik’s Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG with tungsten concentrate recovered from tailings at the shuttered Los Santos mine in Spain, offering delivery lead times shorter than developing a new mine. Almonty will deploy proprietary tailings-processing technology to treat low-grade waste made economic by post-2025 price rises following China’s tighter export controls, which affect roughly 80% of global tungsten output. The agreement adds a European tungsten source alongside Almonty’s Panasqueira (Portugal) and restarted Sangdong (South Korea) operations, aligning with the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act push for regional extraction and recycling.
Technical Brief
- Tailings at Los Santos will be treated using Almonty’s proprietary low‑grade tungsten recovery technology rather than recommencing open-pit mining.
- Supply is contracted on a long-term take‑or‑pay basis with Sandvik’s Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG unit, shifting volume and price risk allocation.
- Los Santos is a brownfield tungsten operation in Spain, previously shuttered, now repurposed solely as a tailings-reprocessing site.
- Spain hosts Western Europe’s largest tungsten reserves, yet new projects such as Almonty’s Valtreixal remain stalled at permitting.
- Almonty’s production portfolio now spans tailings reprocessing at Los Santos, hard‑rock mining at Panasqueira (Portugal) and the restarted Sangdong mine (South Korea).
- Tungsten’s end uses cited include high‑temperature, high‑hardness applications such as weapons systems and semiconductor manufacturing tooling.
- EU policy drivers include the 2024 Critical Raw Materials Act and tungsten’s inclusion in the Commission’s joint‑purchasing list alongside rare earths and gallium.
Our Take
Almonty Industries already has long-dated tungsten offtakes from Sangdong, including a 21‑year agreement with Global Tungsten & Powders in our coverage, so adding Sandvik as a buyer further diversifies demand across both European and Asian downstream customers at a time when China accounts for about 80% of global tungsten production.
Across our mining database, tungsten and other critical minerals such as rare earths and gallium increasingly appear in space, defence and high-performance tooling narratives—echoed by Morgan Stanley’s ‘Space 60’ piece that also highlighted Almonty—so this Sandvik offtake likely strengthens Almonty’s credentials as a strategic supplier to advanced manufacturing sectors.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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