Toronto, Canada-based critical minerals miner Almonty Industries plans to shift its jurisdiction of incorporation to the US, a move it says will better position the company to be more competitive in global tungsten and molybdenum markets.
Almonty expects to complete its incorporation in Delaware — referred to as its "US domestication" — by the beginning of March, contingent on receiving shareholder and regulatory approvals and satisfying other legal requirements, chief executive Lewis Black told Argus on Tuesday. The company also plans to move its headquarters from Toronto to the US, likely New York City, Black said.
The company will maintain listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Australian Securities Exchange for now.
Evolving geopolitical tensions and changing government policies mainly prompted Almonty to pursue re-domiciling closer to its main North American customers, with the company citing China's export ban on super-hard materials and the US' aim to shore up domestic supply chains of key metals. US president Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order that included efforts to restore the country's "mineral dominance".
Adding to Almonty's motivation was the future implementation of a final rule that would restrict companies from applying for US defense contracts if they sourced tungsten from "covered nations" that include China and Russia. The rule, which goes into effective 1 January 2027, expands prohibitions to include tungsten that was "mined, refined, separated [or] melted", rather than just "melted" in the original directive.
That would leave Almonty's operations as one of the main sources of tungsten — a key input in semiconductor, battery and defense applications — for those looking to do business with the Pentagon, Black said.
Almonty produces tungsten concentrates at its Los Santos and Panasqueira mines in Spain and Portugal, respectively. The company remains focused on ramping operations at its Sangdong project in South Korea, which is expected to produce 2.3mn metric tonnes (t)/yr of tungsten oxide (WO3) in the first phase.
Nearly half of the offtake from Sangdong will go to Pennsylvania-based Global Tungsten & Powders (GTP) under a long-term supply agreement, with the remainder of the mine's potential output being sold into the Korean market.
Future plans for Sangdong include adding a smelter and boosting output to 4.8mn t/yr in the project's second phase.
Black noted that Almonty is contemplating adding other downstream processing capabilities to become a vertically integrated tungsten producer, or it may partner with companies that already operate further down the metal's value chain.
