Vancouver mining firm North American Tungsten Corp. says the element is valuable due to its resilient properties in applications including high-speed cutting tools.

Tungsten is an interesting commodity, according to Stephen Leahy. The chairman and CEO of North American Tungsten Corp. Ltd. explains that China produces 85 percent of the world’s tungsten. North American Tungsten, with its operational mining site in the Northwest Territories, Canada, produces about 5 percent. However, it is the only tungsten mining operation in North America.

“We are the largest tungsten operation outside of China,” Leahy notes. “When you look at the resource numbers, we own about 13 percent of the world’s known tungsten.” 

Tungsten’s physical properties make it especially interesting, he continues. Also called wolfram, tungsten is an extremely hard, dense element, usually gray to white metallic in color. Its hardness is second only to diamond, and it has the highest melting point, lowest coefficient of expansion and lowest vapor pressure of any material. It is corrosion resistant, non-toxic and does not break down or decompose, being environmentally benign, unlike lead.

With its resilient properties, tungsten is used in a variety of industrial applications, including high-speed cutting tools, heavy machinery and specialty alloys. “A significant amount of tungsten is used in industrial applications such as on drill bits,” Leahy explains. “It’s an extremely important element to its applications.

“With the rapidly increasing and development of the middle class of Asia and India, these industrial applications have become increasingly more in demand; the world is consuming more tungsten than ever before.”

Deep Reserves
North American Tungsten operates two mining sites: Cantung and Mactung. Cantung is 100 percent owned and has been in production since 2005. It is the Western world’s largest tungsten supplier.

Drilling for the Mactung deposit in Yukon Territory began in 1968, and a significant deposit was outlined by 1973. After continued property evaluation and conceptual engineering and procurement for construction, deteriorating tungsten prices caused the construction bids to stop in 1984.

Value-Added Processing
Despite demand for tungsten, the market is narrow. Leahy says many customers can’t process the material, which is why North American Tungsten has begun further-processing tungsten for end-users.

The company has developed a joint venture with Tundra Composites LLC in Minnesota to utilize new processing technologies that remove the impurities from the tungsten concentrate and produce ammonium paratungstate (APT) and composite powders. 

The process, which takes place at Tundra, will refine the company’s tungsten concentrate into APT and low-grade tungsten powder. Some of the low-grade tungsten powder will be used in composite processing, as well as processing of intermediate purities and tungsten carbide.

Additionally, high-purity, wire-grade tungsten is produced for various applications. Leahy says the additional processing efforts create upward of a 1,000 more potential customers for the company. “We’re not going retail, but through APT and powder processing we’re moving up the chain and opening ourselves up to a much larger buying market,” Leahy says.

Currently, China is North American Tungsten’s largest customer, followed by the United States, Europe and Japan.�