What is it?
The metal with the highest melting point of them all — you can heat it to 3,400 C before it turns liquid.
Why does it matter?
Tungsten carbide is what cuts, drills and mills every other metal. Industrial capacity depends on it in a way that is easy to overlook.
Deeper written sections for this material have not been published yet. Everything below is drawn straight from the source datasets and is complete.
Where it comes from in the rock
All ore minerals →These are the minerals that actually carry tungsten. A deposit is only an orebody if one of them is concentrated enough to pay for digging it up.
Scheelite
The skarn tungsten mineral. Its bright blue fluorescence under UV light is a standard field prospecting tool.
Wolframite
One of two tungsten ores; the classic vein mineral of granite-hosted systems.
Who produces it
See it on a map →Mine production
Mine productionmetric tons 2025 (estimated) World total 85,000 metric tons
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · Mine production of contained tungsten, from wolframite and scheelite ore. · source ↗
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Country | Production | Share of world |
|---|---|---|
| China | 67,000 | 78.8% |
| Vietnam | 3,000 | 3.5% |
| Other countries | 2,400 | 2.8% |
| Kazakhstan | 2,400 | 2.8% |
| Russia | 2,000 | 2.4% |
| Korea, North | 2,000 | 2.4% |
| Bolivia | 1,700 | 2.0% |
| Rwanda | 1,300 | 1.5% |
| Australia | 1,000 | 1.2% |
| Austria | 840.0 | 1.0% |
| Spain | 800.0 | 0.9% |
| Portugal | 700.0 | 0.8% |
| United States | Zero | — |
| World total | 85,000 | 100% |
“Withheld” means the USGS suppressed the figure to avoid disclosing an individual company's data — it does not mean zero. Country rows do not always sum to the world total because the source rounds each figure independently and does not always break out an “other countries” line.
Who holds the reserves
Reserves
Reservesmetric tons 2025
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · source ↗
| Country | Reserves | Share of world |
|---|---|---|
| China | 2,500,000 | 53.2% |
| Other countries | 950,000 | 20.2% |
| Australia | 570,000 | 12.1% |
| Russia | 400,000 | 8.5% |
| Vietnam | 170,000 | 3.6% |
| Spain | 66,000 | 1.4% |
| Korea, North | 29,000 | 0.6% |
| Austria | 10,000 | 0.2% |
| Portugal | 3,400 | 0.1% |
| United States | Not applicable | — |
| Bolivia | Not applicable | — |
| Kazakhstan | Not applicable | — |
| Rwanda | Not applicable | — |
| World total | >4,700,000 | 100% |
The source publishes this world total as a bound rather than a point figure, so the shares in the last column are themselves bounds.
Price
concentrate, average in-warehouse Rotterdam, dollars per dry metric ton unit of tungsten trioxide
Annual averagedollars per dry metric ton unit
Basis: concentrate, average in-warehouse Rotterdam, dollars per dry metric ton unit of tungsten trioxide. Annual averages as published in USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · source ↗. These are reference annual averages, not a live market quote.
Where it is processed and refined
| Plant | Kind | Stage | Country | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung Pyeongtaek Campus | Semiconductor fab | Component | South Korea | Input |
| TSMC Fab 18, Tainan | Semiconductor fab | Component | Taiwan | Input |
What it is used for
All end markets →| End market | What it does there | Importance |
|---|---|---|
| Semiconductors | Contacts and vias | Defining |
| Aerospace & Defence | Penetrators and counterweights | Important |
How much of it a technology needs
| Technology | Quantity | Quoted | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leading-Edge Logic Chip Grams per wafer. | trace | per 300 mm wafer | Contacts and vias |
Indicative range compiled from published technology studies and chemistry; verify against a manufacturer specification before use. Run these numbers at any scale in the material calculator →
Export controls
| Country | Control | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| China | Export licensing requirement for materials and technologies | Antimony (2024), bismuth (2025), synthesized diamond (2025), gallium (2023), germanium (2023), graphite (2023), indium (2025), magnesium materials (2024), molybdenum (2025), rare earths (2025), silver (2026), tellurium (2025), tungsten (2025), and items related to lithium batteries and artificial graphite anode materials (2025). ↗ |
| Russia | Export ban | Steel waste and scrap, tungsten scrap, and enriched uranium (2022). ↗ |
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, table 4 — controls in effect as of January 2026, excluding controls since lifted.