Sangdong mine, South Korea — Over the course of a long time, China has come to dominate the uncommon earths and important minerals industries, nearly cornering the market on uncooked supplies which are important to each facet of recent life, from cellphones to armor piercing ammunition and AI missile steering methods.
Beijing’s stranglehold on the manufacturing of those priceless metals and minerals has pushed a hasty search by U.S. authorities to safe various provide choices.
Lewis Black says his firm is able to assist fill the void, a minimum of with regards to the availability of tungsten, a mineral he calls “important” to U.S. protection wants.
Black, CEO of the Canadian mining firm Almonty Industries, flew from New York to South Korea final week to present CBS Information a tour of the mine he hopes will quickly be producing sufficient tungsten to fulfill a minimum of essentially the most pressing of America’s wants.
CBS Information
Within the days earlier than his flight to the Sangdong mine, Black met with U.S. officers, together with on the White Home, and he signed a deal guaranteeing that Almonty will, sooner or later, provide sufficient tungsten for U.S. safety wants.
Black mentioned he could not talk about the small print of the settlement with the U.S. authorities.
Tungsten’s superpower
The facility of tungsten is rooted in the truth that it has the best melting level of any ingredient. Whereas utilized in on a regular basis objects from electrical wiring to semiconductors and batteries, its purposes within the protection business make it really indispensable.
“It is vital. It is additional than crucial, it is important,” Black instructed CBS Information, standing in an unlimited purple constructing lined in corrugated metal sheeting that homes his processing plant in Sangdong.
As he spoke, equipment that breaks down the ore — the rocks embedded with tungsten — floor in a sluggish round movement, present process checks in preparation for being totally commissioned later this 12 months.
CBS Information 
“It is not simply within the issues you may see like munitions and armor,” Black mentioned. “You wish to construct armored automobiles? All of the engineering, all of the AI chips, AI chips you may’t construct with out tungsten gasoline. You wish to construct a aircraft? The rockets, it is in every part. It is a important element, a small one, however with out it, you may’t do it.”
The Sangdong tungsten mine’s rise, fall and renaissance
Tungsten was first found in a rocky outcrop on the Sangdong web site, about 115 miles southeast of Seoul, in 1906. A Japanese firm began mining there a few decade later, and the tungsten extracted was later used for Japan’s conflict machine in the course of the Second World Conflict.
The top of that conflict introduced an finish to Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula, and the Sangdong mine returned to Korean management. It will go on to have a profound impact on South Korea’s economic system, at one level accounting for 30% of the nation’s GDP.
CBS Information 
South Korean presidents visited the mine a minimum of six occasions — it was a supply of nationwide pleasure. However within the Nineties, it fell sufferer to China’s value dumping insurance policies and was mothballed.
For the following three a long time, the U.S., together with many different Western nations, benefited from a budget, authorities sponsored supplies being produced by China.
However that profit turned a reliance, and it left Washington uncovered and susceptible amid a tense commerce conflict with China that is seen Beijing impose export restrictions on some uncommon earths and different crucial supplies.
In response, there’s been a rush to determine various provide chains.
China controls a minimum of 80% of the world’s present tungsten provides, in response to Almonty, with Russia and North Korea each holding a smaller however important share of the belongings.
Almonty Industries is within the means of relocating its headquarters to New York. It is a clear indication that the U.S. authorities has change into an important a part of Black’s enterprise — his greatest buyer, in truth.
Almonty took possession of the Sandong mine in 2015.
Catching up with China is “going to be disruptive”
Almonty additionally has tungsten mines in Spain and Portugal, and it just lately bought one in Montana, particularly within the curiosity, Black mentioned, of U.S. nationwide safety.
“With the U.S. authorities, that is one of many the reason why we have taken a mine within the U.S. — bringing our know-how to the nation in order that we are able to begin to generate extra human capital for the long run,” he mentioned. “To me it feels good for the legacy of the corporate to fill a spot that has been left vastly uncovered.”
Black mentioned the mine in Montana will not be operational for years, nevertheless, as Almonty nonetheless must safe permits and practice personnel. It is all analogous, he notes, to the overarching downside the U.S. and its Western companions have as they search to untangle themselves from provide chain reliance on China; it will take a very long time.
“China dominates so many various sectors, whether or not it’s uncommon earths, lithium, graphite, tin, lead, aluminum,” Black mentioned, including that over the past eight a long time many such industries merely “fell out of favor within the West, and we deserted uncooked supplies.”
There are extra just lately found sources of some key supplies, notably in Africa, and the U.S. has sought to construct enterprise ties there — however Black says China has “lined most bases,” already securing funding in lots of African nations by way of its “Belt and Highway” initiative.
He believes it’ll take a minimum of a decade for the U.S. to fully diversify its provide chains, not least due to the necessity to practice a workforce.
“We do not have the folks to run these mines,” Black instructed CBS Information. “The U.S. and the West have some catching as much as do.”
Within the interim, he expects American business to face some disruption.
“I purchased this 10 years in the past,” he mentioned of the Sangdong facility. “Mines in democracies are a journey, and never for the faint hearted.”
Black expects “it will be a extremely powerful, depressing journey” as industries such because the American automotive sector work to wean themselves off low-cost Chinese language uncooked supplies.
“You wish to onshore all this manufacturing however you don’t have any method of manufacturing the parts to provide this manufacturing. This has bought to be accomplished … It is going to be disruptive, there are going to be occasions when some sectors are going to expire of parts — that is inevitable. On this explicit occasion, everybody goes to only suck it up and simply energy ahead, as a result of it is the one method it may be accomplished.”
Just a few months in the past the U.S. Protection Logistics Company put out a Request for Info (RFI) for tungsten — successfully an SOS name for the crucial mineral, which stunned some within the business because it successfully uncovered the U.S. scarcity.
“I feel the U.S. authorities is saying, ‘all proper, no matter we are able to discover, we might higher stash it whereas we construct this provide chain,'” mentioned Black.
He expects the Sangdong to be operational by the primary quarter of 2026, and as soon as it’s, it must be working 16 hours a day, with the related processing plant operational 24 hours per day, producing an estimated 1.2 million tons of tungsten ore per 12 months.
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