Molybdenum Through 2035: Where the Demand Actually Comes From

Moly closed 2023 near $37/lb on the Platts dealer oxide, then settled back into the low $20s through most of 2024. That range — roughly $18 to $25 — is where the market actually lives, and it's where most of our own project economics get stress-tested. Anyone waiting for another 2005-style spike before committing off-take is, honestly, going to miss the interesting part of the next decade.

I want to lay out how I see the molybdenum market outlook through 2035, from the perspective of someone sitting on porphyry-style Cu-Mo mineralisation in the Karakoram and getting asked, weekly, whether we can commit tonnage.

Steel is still the whole game, but the mix is shifting

Around 80% of global moly goes into steel. That number hasn't really moved in twenty years. What's moved is which steels.

Stainless (300-series especially, where moly runs 2–3% in 316 and up to 6–7% in super-austenitics) is growing on desalination, offshore, LNG trains and pharmaceutical plant. HSLA and pipeline steels are the second engine — moly at 0.15 to 0.30% gets you the strength-to-weight and sour-service tolerance that X70 and X80 line pipe need. And then tool steels and high-speed steels, small in tonnage, high in value.

Here's the thing about the pipeline story that I think buyers underprice: sour gas fields in the Gulf, and the CCS retrofit build-out in Europe and the US, both want the same grades. CO2 pipelines for carbon capture aren't a fringe technology anymore — the US 45Q credit alone has pulled somewhere north of 90 projects into FID or near-FID stages. Every one of those needs moly-bearing pipe.

So when people ask me about moly demand, I don't start with EVs. I start with pipe mills in Anshan, Dalmine and Hyundai Steel.

Catalysts — the quiet 10%

Hydroprocessing catalysts (CoMo and NiMo on alumina) take roughly 10 to 12% of global moly. Refineries use them to hit ultra-low sulphur diesel specs, and increasingly to co-process renewable feedstocks and pyrolysis oils. Every time a jurisdiction tightens sulphur specs — India's BS-VI rollout, IMO 2020 on bunker fuel, the coming tightening on marine — catalyst turnover goes up.

And catalyst moly doesn't really recycle back into the same market cleanly. Spent catalyst reclaimers in the Netherlands and Estonia recover a good chunk, but net demand keeps climbing at about 3 to 4% CAGR on the catalyst side alone. Not spectacular. Just relentless.

The piece I got wrong when I first started modelling this was assuming catalyst demand would flatten with the energy transition. It hasn't. Refineries aren't shutting — they're reconfiguring. Renewable diesel plants in Rotterdam and Singapore use more CoMo per barrel processed than a conventional hydrotreater, not less.

Defence and the alloy question

This is where the conversation with US and European buyers gets specific. Moly goes into:

• Armour steels (MIL-A-46100, MIL-DTL-32332 and their equivalents) at 0.4 to 0.6%
• Gun barrel steels and pressure vessels
• Superalloys — Inconel 718, Hastelloy, the whole family — where moly can run from 3% to 17%
• Titanium alloys, notably Ti-6Al-4V's cousins used in airframes and fasteners

US DPA Title III has been quietly funding domestic moly capacity precisely because the Pentagon looked at the supplier map and didn't like what it saw. China, Chile, USA and Peru account for over 80% of mine supply. Chile alone — Codelco, Antofagasta, Los Pelambres — produces around 21% of global output as by-product from copper porphyries. And that supply is directly tethered to copper prices and copper mine plans, which is a coupling that makes defence planners nervous.

This is where a Pakistani porphyry belt with moly credits becomes a serious conversation and not a pitch deck curiosity. Our concessions in the Kohistan and Karakoram arcs sit on the same broad tectonic setting that gave Reko Diq its endowment further south — arc magmatism, calc-alkaline intrusives, the geochemistry works. We're seeing moly values in the 200 to 600 ppm range in some of our early channel sampling, which is standard porphyry-Cu-Mo territory.

Where I think prices sit in 2030 and 2035

I'll give you my honest read, not a consultant's fan chart.

Base case: moly averages $22 to $28/lb through 2028, then structural tightness pushes it into the $28 to $35/lb range from 2030 onward. The tightness comes from three places at once — Chinese domestic consumption absorbing more of its own output (it's already a net importer some quarters), Chilean by-product supply plateauing as copper grades decline, and Western defence and pipeline demand ratcheting up.

Upside case ($40+/lb sustained): a supply disruption in Chile combined with a serious CCS pipeline build-out. Not my base case, but not a tail event either.

Downside case ($15 to $18): a China property-and-steel recession that lasts. Possible. Watch Chinese rebar and HRC exports as the leading indicator.

What buyers should actually do about it

If you're a stainless mill, a pipe mill, a catalyst manufacturer or a defence-primed alloy house, the question isn't whether moly gets tighter. It's whether you want term supply from a diversified geography or another five years of Chile-China exposure.

We're not going to be the world's largest moly producer. But a well-run porphyry in Gilgit-Baltistan, moving concentrate down the KKH to Karachi, can put a few thousand tonnes of contained moly a year into a Western supply chain that badly wants it. That's the conversation I'm having in Frankfurt and Tokyo right now.

And if you're modelling 2035 with moly flat at $20 — I'd genuinely like to know what you're seeing that I'm not.