Molybdenum from Pakistan: What's Actually in the Ground and Who's Asking About It

Last month I had three separate calls about moly. One from a steel alloy buyer in Osaka, one from a defence-adjacent trader in Frankfurt, one from a Chinese smelter group routing through Kashgar. All asking the same question in different words: can Pakistan actually deliver molybdenum at scale, and on what timeline?

Honest answer? Yes, but not next quarter. Let me explain what we're sitting on and why the interest has sharpened in the last 18 months.

The geology, plainly

Molybdenum in Gilgit-Baltistan shows up the way it shows up almost everywhere worth mining it — as molybdenite (MoS2) in porphyry systems and in associated skarns and quartz veins on the margins of the Karakoram batholith and the Kohistan island arc suture. This isn't speculative geology. The same intrusive belt that hosts our copper porphyry targets near Chalt and the Bagrote valley carries Cu-Mo signatures that are textbook for the type. Anyone who's worked Bingham Canyon or El Teniente will recognise the setting.

Our reconnaissance and trenching across two of our 16 concessions has returned molybdenite in quartz-sericite altered zones with grades that — and I'll be careful here because we're still in the channel-sampling phase — sit in a range that's economic by global porphyry standards when paired with copper credits. Think 0.018% to 0.04% Mo with copper running alongside in the 0.3 to 0.6% range in better intercepts. Not world-class on moly alone. But as a by-product credit on a copper operation, the economics shift considerably.

There's also a separate vein-hosted moly occurrence we've been mapping where grades go higher in narrow structures. Different beast entirely — smaller tonnage, higher grade, faster to bring into a small-scale concentrate stream if a buyer wanted early material to qualify.

Why the phone keeps ringing

Molybdenum is on the US critical minerals list, the EU strategic raw materials list, and the UK's critical minerals refresh. That's not new. What changed is the demand picture.

Moly goes into high-strength low-alloy steel, stainless, superalloys for jet engines and gas turbines, catalysts for desulphurisation of fuels, and increasingly into solar selective coatings and certain battery chemistries under R&D. The defence side — armour plate, naval steel, missile components — has its own quiet pull on supply.

And here's the thing buyers are starting to say out loud: roughly 45% of global mined moly comes out of China, and another big chunk comes as by-product from Chilean and Peruvian copper mines that have their own water and permitting headwinds. Western buyers are sitting in procurement meetings being told to find a third source. Pakistan isn't an obvious answer yet. But geography (overland to China, sea route to the Gulf and onward to Europe via Karachi or Gwadar) and the geology make it a real one.

I got this wrong at first, by the way. Two years ago I assumed the moly conversations would follow the copper conversations — buyers would come for Cu and take Mo as a bonus. It's been the opposite for about a third of the inbound. They want the moly and treat copper as the credit.

Licensing, logistics and what off-take actually looks like

Mineral titles in Gilgit-Baltistan sit under the GB Minerals Concession Rules, administered through the GB Mineral Department. Our 16 concessions are held with exploration and (on the more advanced blocks) mining lease coverage. Foreign partners come in through a JV structure — typically a Pakistan-registered operating company with the foreign partner taking equity, off-take rights, or both. The State Bank route for repatriation of dividends and the SECP filings are well-trodden ground now. Not frictionless. But workable.

Logistics is the question I get most from European buyers. Concentrate moves by road from site to Karachi port — that's a 1,500 km haul on the Karakoram Highway and the N-5. Long, yes. But moly concentrate is a high-value, low-volume product. A 20-foot container of moly concentrate at 50% Mo content is worth real money, and trucking economics work. For Chinese buyers, the Khunjerab pass route is shorter and they know it well.

For off-take, what we're open to:

• Long-term concentrate supply agreements (5-10 year), tied to a defined ramp-up
• Pre-payment structures against tonnage delivered, which help us fund the capex on processing
• JV equity at the project level, with the partner taking a share of production at agreed pricing formulas (usually Platts moly oxide minus a treatment charge)
• Tolling arrangements where a partner takes ore or low-grade concentrate for upgrading offshore

What we won't do is sign exclusive global off-take across the whole portfolio for a single buyer at this stage. The portfolio is too diverse and the critical-minerals demand too fragmented across geographies for that to make sense for either side.

Where we actually are

To be straight with you: we have proven occurrence, channel sampling, trenching, and surface mapping on the priority moly-bearing blocks. We do not yet have a JORC or NI 43-101 compliant resource. A drill campaign on the lead porphyry target is budgeted and scoped — that's the conversation we're having with the technical due-diligence teams who've visited site this year.

If you're a buyer who needs tonnage in 2025, I'm not your supplier. If you're building a 2027-2030 supply position and you want to be in early on a Pakistani molybdenum source that's not exposed to the same concentration risk as the rest of the market, that's the conversation worth having.

Drop me a line through gbxresources.org. Tell me what form you need the material in, what volumes, and what your qualification timeline looks like. That's where these things actually start.