Almonty Secures Sandvik Offtake for Spanish Tailings While Rwanda Venture Takes Shape
Published on 09/18/2026 at 13:40 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Almonty Industries has locked in a multi-year purchase agreement with Wolfram Bergbau und Hütten AG, the Austrian tungsten unit of Sweden's Sandvik group, covering output from its Los Santos mine in western Spain. The deal lifted the shares 2.1% to EUR 12.56 on the day of the announcement.
Take-or-pay terms anchor the Spanish project
Los Santos sits roughly 50 kilometres south of Salamanca and has been idle since February 2020. Under the contract, at least 1,720 tonnes of contained tungsten trioxide will be processed from historical tailings at the site, with the offtake structured on a binding take-or-pay basis. To secure exclusive rights, the Sandvik subsidiary is making a conditional one-time payment of USD 3 million, equivalent to EUR 2.61 million.
Reprocessing the legacy material lets Almonty draw on resources that have already been developed, avoiding an immediate return to conventional underground mining at the location.
Washington's procurement clock is ticking
The timing lands squarely in a period of shifting geopolitical ground for tungsten. From 1 January 2027, tougher procurement rules at the US Department of Defense will largely shut out tungsten sourced from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran for military purchases. With China controlling around 85% of global supply according to the USGS, Western industrial and defence groups are hunting for alternative sources with growing urgency — a search that gives projects like Los Santos added weight for supply security.
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Rwanda joint venture adds an African leg
Beyond Spain, Almonty is pushing ahead on several international fronts. Under a binding partnership with the Rwandan government, the company will hold 75% of the joint subsidiary Almonty Rwanda, with the state taking 25%. Rwanda is contributing the Shyorongi exploration concession and a mineral processing licence to the venture in return. Reuters reports the project is backed by a US economic framework — geopolitical cover that matters given tungsten's classification as a critical metal with high supply risk in Western economies. If mining and refining can be built out in Rwanda as planned, Almonty gains a strategic foothold outside the traditional producing regions.
The company also started operations at its processing plant at the Sangdong mine in South Korea's Gangwon province just over a month ago, a property that already carries long-term offtake contracts with international partners. To fund the broader expansion, Almonty placed USD 700 million in convertible bonds in June 2026.
Market weighs transformation against execution risk
Investors are giving the build-out of a Western tungsten supply chain credit: the stock is up 58% since the start of the year. Even so, the paper traded pre-market at EUR 12.51, roughly 39% below its 52-week high — a reminder that the market is still working through a revaluation of the risks and rewards attached to the company's aggressive expansion. Alongside the project pipeline, Almonty is tidying up its organisational structures, a consolidation of trading venues that could concentrate liquidity on the remaining exchanges while creating short-term adjustment needs for international shareholders.
An upcoming extraordinary meeting should provide the first signals on how smoothly the transformation proceeds, with decisions likely on the future corporate structure and the financing of the projects in the pipeline. The strategic case rests on tungsten's status as a sought-after industrial metal and the scaling potential of the African assets; the operational challenges of building mining and processing capacity in emerging markets remain the counterweight.
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