Rwanda and Almonty Form Tungsten Mining Joint Venture, Government Holds 25% Stake

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 14, Almonty Industries announced that it had reached an agreement with the Rwandan government to jointly develop and process tungsten resources. Under the agreement, the Rwandan government will inject the Shyorongi tungsten exploration concession and a mineral processing license into the newly established joint venture Almonty Rwanda Pty Ltd in exchange for a 25% equity stake; Almonty will hold the remaining 75% equity. The cooperation was advanced after facilitation by the U.S. Department of State and is linked to critical minerals investment cooperation under the 2025 "U.S.-Rwanda Shared Economic Prosperity Framework."

In the initial phase, the project will not directly build a large-scale centralized concentrator. Instead, it will first purchase ore, pre-concentrate, and tailings from existing license holders and small-scale miners in Rwanda, forming early supply through exports or further upgrading and processing. Almonty also plans to deploy mobile tailings processing units and conduct exploration across the approximately 32-square-kilometer Shyorongi concession area. Once the resource base and feedstock supply meet the conditions, construction of centralized processing facilities will be advanced.

The core assets of the Shyorongi project include tungsten exploration rights and a mineral processing license. At this stage, publicly available information has not yet disclosed the mineral resource volume, designed mining and processing scale, processing plant investment amount, construction timetable, or final product output. Therefore, the project currently remains at the stage of "joint venture platform establishment + feedstock integration + resource exploration + processing plan preparation" and cannot be described as having entered mine construction or the commencement of a centralized concentrator.

Rwanda is already one of Africa's major tungsten producers and an important source for the U.S. tungsten supply chain. Trinity Metals disclosed in June this year that its Nyakabingo tungsten mine has cumulatively supplied more than 320 tonnes of high-grade tungsten concentrate to the Global Tungsten & Powders plant in Pennsylvania, United States, since August 2025, with recent supply volumes having increased to as much as approximately 20% of the United States' average monthly consumption of primary tungsten concentrate.

The Almonty project also has a direct timing link to subsequent U.S. defense procurement rules. The United States' new traceability requirements for defense tungsten procurement will take effect in January 2027, involving the need for certain tungsten raw materials in military supply chains to be traceable to their source. With Almonty's establishment in Rwanda of a supply system spanning mine sources, tailings processing, and centralized processing, the agreement itself has incorporated resource sources and processing licenses into a single joint venture platform.

Almonty currently has tungsten assets in South Korea, Portugal, and the United States. Its Sangdong tungsten mine in South Korea began feeding its concentrator in July 2026 and started producing saleable tungsten concentrate; the company positions this mine as its core tungsten production base. With this entry into Rwanda, the company has added an African tungsten resource and processing platform.