Elmet Group locks in UK tungsten supply under $450m US defence deal

A US-UK offtake pact worth over $230m annually cements allied critical-minerals supply chains backed by both governments' strategic funds.

By Disrupts Editorial Team Sat, 3 October 2026 AI level 2 of 5

AI level 2 of 5: drafted by our AI editorial assistant from the company's announcement; fact-checked, edited and signed off by Mark Walker, Editorial Director. What the levels mean

A bright control room features rows of desks with chairs and multiple computer monitors displaying blue data graphics, facing a large curved wall screen showing a world map and data visualizations, with city buildings visible through large

The Elmet Group (NASDAQ: ELMT), a Maine-headquartered provider of critical materials and precision-engineered components, has signed a long-term tungsten concentrate offtake agreement with Tungsten West (AIM: TUN), covering production from the Hemerdon mine in Devon, England. The deal is expected to deliver more than 1,000 metric tonnes of tungsten concentrate per year, with a combined value the company says exceeds $230 million annually at current ammonium paratungstate (APT) prices. It is the latest move in a coordinated, transatlantic push to wrest control of a strategically vital supply chain away from non-allied producers, most notably China, which currently dominates global tungsten processing.

The timing is deliberate. The announcement follows directly from a landmark $450 million commitment by the United States Department of War (DoW) to Elmet, disclosed on 14 September 2026, and a separate £71 million investment by the UK Government's National Wealth Fund in Tungsten West, announced in August. Together, the two injections of sovereign capital are funding not just mine operations but an entire allied refining and conversion corridor: Hemerdon concentrate will be processed into APT and downstream intermediates through Elmet's refining network before flowing into manufacturing facilities in Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and a plant in Schwabmünchen, Germany, subject to the pending completion of an asset purchase from OSRAM GmbH.

Sovereign capital reshaping critical-minerals geography

The structural significance here extends well beyond tungsten. What Elmet and Tungsten West are assembling is a vertically integrated, friend-shored supply chain for a material that underpins defence-grade munitions, semiconductor tooling, aerospace components, and medical imaging equipment. Tungsten's extreme hardness and high melting point make it irreplaceable in applications from armour-piercing rounds to ion-implantation equipment used in chip fabrication. That dual-use profile, defence and semiconductors simultaneously, is precisely why both the DoW and the UK National Wealth Fund have moved in at scale.

Elmet CEO Peter Anania framed the deal in explicitly strategic terms: "The Elmet Group and Tungsten West are firmly aligned in our commitment to securing domestic and allied production, supply, and consistency for customers across the full breadth of critical materials end markets." UK Minister for Reindustrialization Blair McDougall added that the agreement represents "our Critical Minerals Strategy in action, forging ambitious international partnerships that strengthen our economic security."

Cross-sector read-across: defence, semiconductors, and energy

For cross-sector investors, the Elmet-Tungsten West pact illustrates a broader capital reallocation trend that is quietly reshaping several industries at once. In defence procurement, allied governments are increasingly moving upstream, funding raw-material extraction and refining, not just finished systems. In semiconductors, chipmakers and their equipment suppliers face rising exposure to tungsten bottlenecks: the metal is used extensively in chemical mechanical planarisation (CMP) slurries and physical vapour deposition (PVD) targets. Any tightening of allied tungsten supply has direct implications for fab throughput and, by extension, for the AI compute build-out that depends on those fabs. In energy, tungsten's role in high-temperature components for both conventional and fusion reactor designs means the clean-energy transition adds yet another demand vector to an already constrained supply picture.

The offtake will be managed through Elmet Refining and Trading (ERT), a newly created division established specifically in connection with the DoW investment. Hemerdon is targeting ramp-up to full-scale production by the end of Q1 2027. For sovereign-wealth allocators and defence-adjacent investors, the question is whether this Anglo-American model, government anchor capital unlocking private offtake at scale, becomes the template for other critical minerals where Western supply chains remain dangerously thin: gallium, germanium, and rare-earth oxides all face structurally similar exposure.