Tungsten metal in 2011 spotlight

TAKE your pick for the resource flyers of 2011 -- but tungsten is shaping up to be one of them.

Tungsten has a range of uses from light bulb filaments to strengthening steel for such things as mining drill bits. Its main attribute is high strength at high temperatures its melting point is 3420C.

Australia s -- and the western world s -- tungsten industry is only just getting back on its feet after being king-hit more than 20 years ago when the Chinese flooded the world market at low prices. Tungsten mines all over the world closed and even today China controls 76 per cent of world production but has recently restricted exports.

Prices keep rising as world demand outstrips supply.

One of the more advanced tungsten plays here is Hazelwood Resources (HAZ) which is planning to produce up to 3 per cent of world needs when its West Australian mine comes into operation.

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Several tungsten projects are well advanced in Tasmania and this week Frontier Resources (FNT) completed a soil sampling program at its Cethana-Narrawa project in the north of the island state. A diamond drilling program is planned for the June quarter and will target gold and base metals as well as tungsten. The project area contains at 55 historic workings -- shafts, adits and open pits -- which illustrates the level of mineralisation.

And it seems that tungsten hopeful Icon Resources (III) is about to make some further progress on its Mt Carbine project now that new MD Ian Sheffield-Parker has taken the reins. The company is planning to focus all its attention on getting the

Queensland project into operation and plans to start building a plant to treat the tailings left from historic mining. Construction should begin about the middle of the year. Overall, Icon expects Mt Carbine to have a 15-year mine life.

There are now suspicions that China is about to embark on building a strategic reserve of certain key minerals, tungsten being one. That could add an addition strain on world supplies this year.