Tungsten Price Rises due to Tight Supply

Tungsten is expected to have supply shortage issues in 2011 stemming from export restrictions from China. Due to supply issues the metal has been placed on a list of critical strategic metals by the U.S. and the European Union. Yesterday, China s second largest tungsten producer, Jiangxi Tungsten announced that it will shut down their plant for 3 months for a regular overhaul of the facility. This decrease in supply will put further pressure on supply in the first half of this year and may affect prices that are already around record levels. The price of tungsten APT has risen 81 percent since year over year, from US$185 per MTU to its current price of $335 per MTU. Tungsten concentrate is trading at 111,000-113,000 yuan ($16,742-17,043) per tonne on Wednesday, with prices in the higher end rising 1,000 yuan from last week, stated Metal Bulletin.

The decrease in supply from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to the conflict minerals bill passed by the U.S. government is also another factor to consider for supply-demand fundamentals in this market. The call for tracing the source of minerals in conflict zones has hit a road block due to a lack of funding.

We were already working to tight timescales with no untraceable material being acceptable to the markets after April 1 , stated Kay Nimmo, sustainability and regulatory affairs manager for the International Tin Research Institute. While the decrease in supply from the DRC is minor, as the nation only accounts for 2 to 4 percent of world supply, every bit adds to the tightness of supply chains.

Tungsten Mining News

Ormonde Mining Plc. (LON:ORM) recently announced that the company had submitted applications to Spanish authorities for their Barruecopardo Tungsten Mine. The submission of the application for a Mining Concession is a major milestone in our roadmap to tungsten production at Barruecopardo by late 2012, stated Kerr Anderson, Ormonde s Managing Director.

According to the company, the mine when in full production is capable of producing upwards of 8 percent of non-Chinese tungsten. The total resource base is 10.9 Mt grading 0.45% WO (tungsten trioxide) in the Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource categories. The mine is 90 pe cent owned by Ormonde, the remaining 10 percent is owned by Siemcalsa, a regional, partially state-funded company.

Malaga Inc. (TSE:MLG) announced record production numbers in 2010 from their Pasto Bueno tungsten mine in Peru. The mine produced a record production of 71 996 MTU an increase of 13.6% compared with 2009. This increase stems from the expansion project that Malaga undertook in 2009 which delivered increased production capacity, stated the press release.

Woulfe Mining Corp. (CVE:WOF) announced that the company has closed the CDN$10 million deal with Korean Zinc for funding towards the company s Sangdong Tungsten-Molybdenum Project. The direct investment into the Sangdong tungsten-molybdenum project means this project will progress as it is fully funded and there is no further dilution to Woulfe shareholders for the Sangdong project, stated Brian Wesson, President and CEO of Woulfe Mining. The funding of the project also allows the company to look for other projects to add to shareholder value.

When it comes to lenses for digital pico projectors, there s currently something of a trade-off. Traditional lenses, where multiple glass magnifiers are placed one in front of the other, are long and bulky. Microlens arrays, in which many tiny lenses are assembled together on one flat surface, are a much more compact, lightweight alternative.

However, so far such arrays have mostly been made out of plastic, which the bulbs in some projectors are capable of melting. Now, researchers from Germany s Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology have come up with what they say is a solution: microlens arrays made from glass, using a hot embossing technique.

The process starts with the formation of the die equipment, which is machined out of tungsten carbide using ultra-precise grinders. Because both the die and the glass will expand when heated, and at different rates, the lens pattern that is carved into the two die halves must be made to compensate accordingly in other words, it does not look exactly like the finished product will look.

Next, in a vacuum chamber kept at a constant temperature between 600 and 900C (1,112 and 1,652F), the die halves are pressed together with the glass between them. The main challenge is to keep the material exactly at the temperature where it is malleable but not yet molten, explained project manager Jan Edelmann. That is the only way to guarantee that components made from it will be within the prescribed tolerances to within a few micrometers.

The glass must then be ejected from the mold before cooling begins, as the different cooling rates of the glass and the metal could cause the glass to shatter.

Using this technique, the Fraunhofer team have already produced high-refraction glass microlens arrays, in which alignment faults across all 1,700 microlenses were smaller than 20 micrometers. The researchers believe that it should be possible to apply the system to mass production, where it could serve to bring the price of projection lenses down to a tenth of their current cost. It is also thought that the glass arrays could be used to broaden and homogenize laser beams.