Tyler Durden’s Sunday note on ZeroHedge put the new walls in a row. Washington restricted tungsten scrap exports. The U.K. has backed Tungsten West with public money reported at up to £71 million. Zimbabwe suspended exports of tungsten and antimony, including ores and concentrates. Vietnam is weighing curbs so more rock is processed at home. The question in the thread was “who’s next.” The market question is smaller. Who can still deliver metal that a Western shop is allowed to buy?
China accounts for roughly 80% of mined tungsten, a figure that has been public for years. Beijing has already throttled processed exports for more than a year. A Katusa-style chart in that same recap showed ammonium paratungstate climbing in steps from mid-2024. Treat the exact multiple as a vendor chart, not a lab assay. The direction is not a mystery. Tooling shops feel it first. Last week at Jefferies, MSC Industrial’s Martina McIsaac said a tungsten shock is still moving through the supply chain and that the headache is not over. Cutting tools do not wait for a new mine to finish a feasibility study.
ZeroHedge used that squeeze to argue for producers with ore moving now. Almonty is processing at Sangdong in South Korea and talking a path toward 1.2 million tonnes of ore throughput in 2027, plus oxide plants and a Portugal extension. That is a producer story. It is not the only story. A rearmament cycle and data-center tooling still need feed that is not Chinese. Most of that feed does not exist in North America as a working mine. The United States has scrap rules and almost no operating tungsten pit. Canada has the old belt.
What Nationalism Does to a Junior
Export bans do not create tonnes. They move tonnes behind a fence. U.S. Commerce told scrap sellers, from late August 2026 for one year, to sell tungsten waste at home unless they win an exception. Zimbabwe told shippers to stop sending raw tungsten and antimony out. Both moves sound like security. Both shrink the pool that traders can point at on a screen.
When the pool shrinks, two prices appear. One is the APT quote. The other is the premium for “conflict-free” and “not-China” units that a defense contractor can put in a file after January 2027, when U.S. sourcing rules get tighter. A junior in the Northwest Territories does not sell those units today. It sells the chance that historic rock can be turned into a modern resource. That chance only matters if the drills work and if the assays match the old paper.
That is the honest frame for Rackla Metals (TSX-V: RAK). The company owns 100% of Lentung, staked rather than optioned from a vendor. The ground sits in the Tombstone belt, near the past-producing Cantung mine and in the same district as Fireweed’s Mactung. Rackla does not own Cantung. Cantung’s mill is not Rackla’s mill. Those sentences belong in every paragraph that mentions the neighbor.
Union Carbide drilled Lentung from the late 1970s into 1982. The historic campaign was large: on the order of 178 holes and about 26,900 metres. Then the property went dark for more than four decades. There is no current NI 43-101 mineral resource on Lentung. Historic grades and zones are prior-operator numbers. They have to be twin-tested, surveyed, and rebuilt under today’s rules before anyone can treat them as a resource.
The Drills Are the Only New Fact
That work started this summer. Rackla began diamond drilling at Lentung in August 2026, the first holes on the property since 1982. A second rig, reverse circulation, joined later in the month. The stated plan is about 10,000 metres this season: roughly 4,000 metres of core and 6,000 metres of RC. The diamond holes are meant to confirm grade, shape, and geology. The RC holes are meant to infill and push the shallow Central Zone, where most of the old Union Carbide work sat, often at less than 70 metres.
By late August the company had five diamond holes done in that zone. Field updates in early September put the diamond program deeper into the teens. Management has talked about twinning on the order of two dozen historic holes. First assay batches were slated to leave camp within weeks of the early holes. Visuals in core are not numbers. Until the lab speaks, the only hard fact is metres turned.
The company has also said it wants a 43-101 estimate by late 2026 or early 2027. That is a target, not a filing. It is raising up to about C$3.65 million in flow-through paper to help fund the program. Dilution is part of the junior model. So is weather. So is a camp that has to finish a lot of metres before freeze-up. None of that is hidden if you read the releases.
Canadian Mining Report’s earlier Lentung page called the setup well timed: critical-mineral politics, a historic high-grade skarn, a team led by Simon Ridgway and Scott Casselman, and cash that was then in the high single-digit millions of Canadian dollars. That page also said the quiet part. No one can claim Lentung will become a mine. The new fact since that page is the sound of rigs. The politics since that page is the fence around scrap and concentrate.
How to Put It on a List Without Fooling Yourself
A watch list is a calendar. It is not a bid. The dates that matter are assay drops, any twin holes that miss, any twin holes that hold, and whether a 43-101 resource actually lands. Misses happen in skarns. Continuity fails. Gold and copper in old notes and in a 6.5 g/t stream-sediment anomaly are color, not a second mine.
Size any interest as if the financing window can close. Juniors are stocks first when the S&P dumps. Tungsten can be tight in the tool shop and the equity can still fall. A stink bid on a name you already studied is a process. A market order because China is 80% of supply is not.
Prefer the producer debate and the explorer debate in different sleeves. Almonty’s tonnes, if they arrive, are near-term feed. Lentung is a test of old paper in a jurisdiction that wants critical minerals in speeches and still moves slowly on roads and permits. Both can be true. Only one has drills turning in the NWT this month.
Conclusion
States are locking tungsten behind flags. China still sits on most of the mine supply. Western plants still need the metal for tools, turbines, and defense parts. That squeeze is the story.
Rackla is not the squeeze. It is one Canadian attempt to put new metres under an old deposit while the squeeze is on. The rigs are turning. The resource is not booked. Put the name on a list if the politics and the belt already interest you. Wait for the assays if you need proof. That is the whole idea.
Important information
Rackla Metals Inc. (TSX-V: RAK) is mentioned because it is drilling Lentung. Historic Union Carbide results are not a current NI 43-101 resource. Visual drill observations are not assays. The company does not own the Cantung mine. Export rules and price charts cited from public reports and a ZeroHedge recap can change. This article is not an offer or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. It is not a prediction that Lentung will become a mine. Speak with a licensed adviser. The author and publisher accept no liability for actions taken on this article. Canadian Mining Report and related parties may have commercial relationships; readers should assume that possibility and do their own work.