This article is a sponsored feature from Mining.com.au partner Viking Resources. It is not financial advice. Talk to a registered financial expert before making investment decisions.
The US has no domestic tungsten mines in operation — leaving the door open for a near-term producer to take advantage of market conditions including rising prices and a focus on redirecting supply chains away from China.
It’s no secret that discovering and building a greenfields mine from scratch takes time, sometimes decades, with higher upfront costs, more risk, and more red tape.
Enter Viking Mines (ASX:VKA), which picked up the Linka asset in December last year. The project consists of a suite of three brownfields tungsten mines called Linka, Conquest, and Hillside. Linka is one of six tungsten projects included in the transaction, with the other five also located in Nevada.
Since then, the company has wasted no time in its plans to restart the historical mines, investigating the metallurgical potential with recent test work results confirming a 56.9% tungsten trioxide (WO₃) concentrate at 76% recovery.
That’s before the team drilled a single hole.
The asset is shaping up to be one of the only advanced tungsten projects on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Managing Director and CEO Julian Woodcock says.
“We acquired these tungsten projects in December, at a time when tungsten had started to increase in value, but since then it’s increased further substantially — it’s probably gone up three times since we picked up the project,” Woodcock says.
“When we undertook our due diligence, we collected four metallurgical samples with a total of approximately 300kg, and we’ve been processing one of those samples through quite a comprehensive test work program and that has culminated in us delivering a concentrate of scheelite.
“That really has demonstrated that from the samples that we collected we can produce essentially what will be a marketable or saleable concentrate product.”
The past-producing mine halted production in the 1950s due to falling prices, but Viking is confident there’s plenty of mineralisation left.
“We have a strong belief that with our drilling we’ll be able to define a resource,” Woodcock says.
“We’re looking to essentially be one of the first movers in hopefully bringing a project forward into development in the US at a time when there are currently no operating tungsten mines.”
The local comparison in terms of advanced tungsten projects is London-listed Guardian Metal Resources (LSE:GMET) with the Pilot Mountain Project, also in Nevada.
“Guardian has just put out a Prefeasibility Study, and it has a very large low-grade resource of 11.7 million tonnes at about 0.17%,” Woodcock says.
“It would take well north of US$250 million [$347 million] in capital to bring that online.
“The distinction between Guardian and us is that our project is much higher grade, historically mined at about 0.5%.
“We have completed a concept processing study, and we project that Linka would be a much smaller mine, with much smaller throughput. But because of the higher grade, we wouldn’t be that much smaller in terms of annual production, at around 60–70% of what the Pilot Mountain Project produces, but with much lower capital.”
Price and demand rising thanks to the REEShore Act
Woodcock points to China’s export restrictions (on APT, tungsten carbide, and tungsten oxide) and the US Government’s REEShore Act as the main drivers of upward momentum in the tungsten price.
“At the start of 2025, China — which controls north of 85% of global tungsten supply — restricted exports of a whole series of tungsten products,” he says.
“That saw the price increase from probably around US$250–300 per metric tonne unit (mtu) at the start of the year to almost US$1,000/mtu by the end of 2025.
“Subsequently, supply has got even more constrained and the price is now above US$3,000/mtu.”
Then there’s the REEShore Act, which bans Chinese tungsten from US military supply chains from December 2026, a key step in securing the metal used in munitions.
“From the start of 2027, the US Government is looking at tungsten in the supply chain for the defence industry and has passed an act which forbids tungsten products — tungsten APT or tungsten-produced cutting tools or anything like that down the supply chain — to come from China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran,” Woodcock says.
“Then there’s a second part to this legislation that takes effect from the start of 2028, which says that not only can we not use tungsten products refined or produced in those countries, we also can’t use any tungsten that was mined or sourced there.
“Throughout 2027, there is a period where it could be mined in China, it could be exported and processed elsewhere, and then make it into the supply chain. But from the start of 2028, none at all.
“The US is a major munitions producer and it’s depleting its stockpiles, so there’s going to be a huge, continued demand within the defence industry in the US for tungsten.”
It’s a mandate that didn’t exist when the Linka mine closed in 1956, and now, Woodcock points out, it’s locked in by federal law.
Drilling underway and permitting on the horizon
The company is currently working towards submitting a mining permit application in the near future, with parallel work including environmental studies, water studies, and more metallurgical test work.
Plus, Viking has already commenced drilling at Linka — the first program at the project in more than 40 years.
“We’re being aggressive and pushing everything forward with the goal of being as rapid as possible to move towards permitting,” Woodcock says.
“The initial program we’ve had approved is for about 63 drill holes and our intent is to be drilling north of 3,000m in this initial program.”
The main target is around the Linka mine to confirm historical drill hole results, which include high grades such as 9.8m at around 0.5%, and surface sampling results of up to 0.8–0.9%.
“We’re one of the early movers to be drilling tungsten projects in North America as an ASX-listed company,” Woodcock says.
“We’ll be focusing on confirming mineralisation is present around that historical mine.
“The second aspect of the program is we’re testing to the southwest where mineralisation around Linka goes underneath some cover.
“We’re putting four section lines across this area where the contact lies under cover between two rock types — which is where we believe we’ll find mineralisation at Linka.”
While assays are pending, visual intersections of scheelite (CaWO₄) mineralisation have been confirmed by Viking in the initial holes drilled under the Linka open pit. This bodes well for the project as scheelite is the most important natural tungsten mineral for downstream production.
Step-out extensional drilling is also planned, along with regional testing across the broader intrusion, as the company looks to cement its position at the head of the pack in developing a domestic US tungsten project.
Not only is Linka delivering, but Viking has had some excellent results from its other tungsten projects in Nevada. Reconnaissance sampling at the Long and Terrell projects has returned ‘high-grade’ tungsten mineralisation at both historical mine sites. This includes a surface sample at Terrell grading 2.4% WO₃, and a channel sample at Long returning 1.80m at 1.8% WO₃ (including 0.45m at 2.7% WO₃). The results point to a broader tungsten endowment across Viking’s six-project Nevada portfolio, giving the company optionality and multiple potential future feed sources to support a wider restart of tungsten production in the state.
Exciting times for Viking Mines and its shareholders as the company leads the charge in exploring for tungsten in the heart of Nevada.
Write to Emma Davies at Mining.com.au
Images: Viking Mines
