Martina McIsaac of MSC Industrial Direct, speaking Wednesday at the Jefferies Industrials Conference, put a factory number on a metal most equity desks still treat as a footnote. Inflation in tungsten-carbide inputs is “in the neighborhood of 500%.” Suppliers are still passing cost through the chain. Cutting tools are about 15% of MSC’s revenue. “Tungsten has been the biggest driver,” she told Jefferies analyst Steve Volkmann. “It’s not our whole business, but it’s a chunk of business, and it’s not behind us.”
Prices have “stabilized,” she said, “but the ripples through the supply chain aren’t over yet.” Cadence depends on who has powder and who does not. MSC’s own third-quarter comment still pointed to another increase late in the fourth quarter or early in the first. That is a distributor talking. It is more useful than a slide about decoupling.
Cantor Fitzgerald has carbide and APT prices above $3,000. Katusa Research put China’s share of mine production last year near 79% — about 67,000 tonnes of a world book near 85,000. The United States has had no commercial mine production since 2015. Beijing’s February 2025 export-licensing regime is the policy parent. Katusa cited a drop of nearly 70% in Chinese ammonium paratungstate exports through the first eleven months of 2025. Rotterdam APT, on that shop’s chart, went from about $390 per metric-ton unit at the start of 2025 to roughly $3,400 in the spring. Financial Times reporting relayed in the same notes described Chinese traders bidding several times normal prices for carbide inserts and worn tooling. Christian Keller at Barclays called the position “quasi-monopolistic” leverage.
Canadian miners are not a substitute for that warehouse. They are one of the few OECD addresses where a Western buyer can even attempt a mine. That is the opportunity — and the limit.
Why a Price Shock Does Not Equal a Mine
Tungsten carbide is what machines metal. Bits, inserts, wear parts, defense alloys. There is no cheap stand-in at the same hardness. When China keeps APT at home, the North American tool crib pays first and the Pentagon procurement calendar pays second. DFARS rules due in January 2027 are meant to keep tungsten from covered countries — China, Russia, North Korea, Iran — out of specified U.S. Army components. The Defense Logistics Agency has already shopped for concentrate. Those are demand facts. They do not pour a mill in the Mackenzie Mountains.
Jefferies this month initiated coverage on a Western critical-minerals sleeve that included Almonty, Materion, USA Rare Earth and Neo Performance, with Almonty framed as public exposure to tungsten as it ramps in South Korea. That is a producer-path name. Most Canadian tungsten exposure is not. Most of it is history, a road, and a resource that is not yet a current NI 43-101.
Readers of this site already know the file we published on Rackla Metals Inc. (TSX-V: RAK; OTC: RMETF) and the Lentung project in the eastern Tombstone belt of the Northwest Territories. This piece does not re-rate that file. It places it where McIsaac’s 500% belongs: as one Canadian attempt to answer a shock that is already on the factory floor.
Lentung, Without the Brochure Voice
Lentung is not a 2026 grass-roots peg. It was found in 1960. Union Carbide Exploration took it from 1976 and, over six years, drilled 26,900 metres in 178 holes and pushed the project toward a pre-feasibility-era study. Rackla has said it holds much of that historic core and data. The work now is the unglamorous kind that actually matters: a 3D model, re-log and re-sample of old core for tungsten, copper and gold, and an effort to bring a resource into NI 43-101. A 2025 stream-sediment sample with a 6.5 g/t gold anomaly is a pathfinder, not a mine. Grades in historic holes that printed tungsten well above bulk-mine averages, including figures this site has previously noted outside the old outline, remain historic until they are current.
A current 43-101 is the difference between a story and a number a financier can use. Until that number exists, Lentung is an option on grade, jurisdiction and a metal that just made a distributor flinch. It is not inventory.
Cantung sits about 65 kilometres away by road — a past-producing tungsten mill, gravity circuit and flotation plant on care and maintenance since 2015. It has a published 43-101 in the five-million-tonne-at-0.83%-WO3 neighborhood from prior work, and a long production history. Rackla does not own Cantung. Proximity is not a offtake. It is why the belt is not imaginary. North American Tungsten’s restart talk and federal interest in the same district are part of the same map. So is the Western Canadian Critical Minerals memorandum signed by provincial and territorial ministers — process reform on paper, still process in the field.
Simon Ridgway and Scott Casselman are the operating names. Insiders have been disclosed around 30% of the stock. Treasury in the earlier site note was in the high-single-digit millions of Canadian dollars. That is a junior treasury. It funds a model and a season. It does not fund a mill.
How an Investor Can Use the Shock Without Confusing It for a Coupon
Three sleeves exist. They are not a ranking.
Producers and near-producers outside China — Almonty’s Korean ramp is the name Jefferies put a price target on — feel APT in the P&L first. That is torque with operating risk in a non-Canadian jurisdiction.
Past-producing Canadian ground with a mill shell, Cantung first among them, is a restart problem: power, tailings, labour, and a tungsten price that has to stay high long enough to justify the care-and-maintenance bill.
Exploration and historic-resource juniors, Lentung included, are a 43-101 and a drill year. They can re-rate on a compliant resource if APT stays elevated and if DFARS actually bites in January 2027. They can also sit still while MSC’s “another increase” arrives and leaves without a single new tonne from the Mackenzie.
Canadian jurisdiction is the pitch and the risk. The pitch is OECD title and a government that has discovered critical minerals as a speech. The risk is the same lost decade this readership already knows: assessment clocks, infrastructure that is a winter road, and a capital market that funds stories faster than mills. A tungsten shock does not repeal that. It only makes the option more expensive to ignore — and more expensive to promote.
McIsaac’s line that the ripples are not over is the honest near-term. Stabilized concentrate plus lagging tool prices is how a 500% input becomes a 2027 catalog. It is not how a junior becomes a supplier to the Army. Covered-country rules help only if there is a tonne to stamp.
Conclusion
The tungsten cost shock is no longer a Katusa chart. It is a distributor telling Jefferies that carbide inflation is still near 500% and that another pass-through is coming. China still mines four-fifths of the metal. The United States still mines none. Canadian ground — Lentung in the Tombstone belt, Cantung down the road, a short list of other historic skarns — is how a Western buyer tries to write a different ending. An opportunity is not a warehouse. Historical metres are not a 43-101. A 2027 procurement rule is not a mill permit.
Use the shock to look at who can actually deliver powder. Use Rackla’s file as one Canadian attempt to turn Union Carbide’s holes into a current number. Do not use a factory-floor panic as a reason to skip the resource statement. The bit got expensive first. The mine, if it comes, comes last.
Important information
This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or subscribe for securities of Rackla Metals Inc., Almonty, or any other issuer. Canadian Mining Report has previously published sponsored or issuer-related coverage of Rackla Metals; readers should assume a commercial relationship and conduct independent due diligence. Historical resources and drill results are not current NI 43-101 mineral resources unless a current technical report says so. There is no certainty Lentung or any other project will become a mine. Tungsten prices and export policy can reverse. Mining investments can result in loss of principal. Consult a licensed adviser. The author and publisher accept no liability for actions taken on the basis of this article.