South Korea hunts tungsten treasure in race for rare minerals

SANGDONG - Blue tungsten winking from the walls of abandoned mine shafts, in a town that has seen better days, could be a catalyst for South Korea's bid to break China's dominance of critical minerals and stake its claim to the raw materials of the future.

The scale of the plans illustrates the pressure felt by countries across the world to secure supplies of critical minerals regarded as essential for the green energy transition, from lithium in EV batteries to magnesium in laptops and neodymium found in wind turbines. "In the critical raw material restaurant, China is sitting eating its dessert, and the rest of the world is in the taxi reading the menu," said Mr Julian Kettle, senior vice president for metals and mining at consultancy Wood MacKenzie.The stakes are particularly high for South Korea, home of major chipmakers like Samsung Electronics.

Mr Lewis Black, chief executive of Almonty Korea's Canadian-based parent Almonty Industries, told Reuters that it planned to offer about half of the operation's processed output to the domestic market in South Korea as an alternative to Chinese supply. European prices of 88.5 per cent minimum paratungstate - the key raw material ingredient in tungsten products - are trading around US$346 per tonne, up more than 25 per cent from a year ago and close to their highest levels in five years, according to pricing agency Asian Metal.

Almonty Industries has signed a 15-year deal to sell tungsten to Pennsylvania-based Global Tungsten & Powders, a supplier to the US military, which variously uses the metal in artillery shell tips, rockets and satellite antennae.

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