Tungsten and Molybdenum from the Karakoram: Strategic Metals for Defence Off-Take

Last Tuesday I had a call from a procurement lead at a European primes' supplier — the kind of conversation that didn't happen five years ago. He wanted to know one thing. Could we deliver ammonium paratungstate (APT) feedstock, or at minimum a clean wolframite concentrate above 65% WO3, on a multi-year contract.

That call is not unusual anymore. It's the third one this quarter.

The reason is boring and structural. China controls roughly 82% of global tungsten supply and a similar share of the molybdenum oxide conversion capacity that matters for steel alloying and catalyst feedstock. Western defence primes, ammunition manufacturers and turbine builders are quietly being told by their own ministries to find a second source. Anywhere. Just not there.

So they're calling places like Gilgit-Baltistan. And honestly, a lot of them had to look it up on a map the first time.

What the Karakoram actually hosts

The tungsten and molybdenum story here sits on real geology, not press releases. The Karakoram batholith and its contact aureoles with Paleozoic metasediments have produced classic skarn and greisen mineralisation — the same architecture you see in the Nanling belt in China or parts of the Erzgebirge. Granite intrudes carbonate-bearing sequences, hot fluids carry tungsten and molybdenum out of the cooling pluton, and you get scheelite, wolframite and molybdenite in the contact zones.

We've been working scheelite-bearing skarns in the Chillas–Bunji corridor and molybdenite-bearing porphyry and greisen systems further north toward Hunza. Surface grab samples on one of our tungsten blocks have come back between 0.4% and 1.7% WO3, with a weighted average across 38 samples sitting at 0.62% WO3. That's not a resource estimate — I want to be clear about that. It's surface sampling, channel work, and a few shallow adits. A proper JORC or NI 43-101 resource needs drilling, and that's exactly the stage we're inviting JV partners into.

Molybdenum is the quieter story but arguably the more interesting one for defence buyers. Moly goes into HSLA steels, jet engine superalloys, armour plating and nuclear-grade stainless. We've mapped molybdenite stockwork on two concessions with surface MoS2 values ranging from 0.08% to 0.34%. Porphyry-style — disseminated, structurally controlled, with the kind of tonnage potential that justifies real capex if the drilling confirms what the surface shows.

The grades, in context

A few numbers for buyers who actually read these posts properly:

• Global average mined tungsten grade is around 0.30–0.45% WO3. Our surface work is sitting above that.
• Primary moly mines typically run 0.05–0.25% MoS2. Our higher samples are competitive even before any drill-defined enrichment zones.
• Scheelite responds well to gravity and flotation. Wolframite, where we have it, is even simpler — heavy media plus magnetic separation gets you a saleable concentrate.

None of this is exotic metallurgy. It's well-understood processing that's been done for a century in China, Portugal, Bolivia and Austria.

Why defence buyers specifically

Tungsten carbide is in every armour-piercing penetrator, every fragmentation core, every machine tool that touches a barrel or a turbine blade. The US Defense Logistics Agency has been rebuilding its tungsten stockpile since 2018. The EU added tungsten to its Critical Raw Materials Act list, and the UK MoD has it on their strategic minerals watchlist. Japan has been quietly contracting Vietnamese and Australian supply for years.

Molybdenum sits in a similar bucket — naval steel, submarine hull alloys, missile components, reactor cladding. The defence demand is smaller in tonnage than the civilian steel market but it pays a premium for traceable, non-Chinese origin material. That premium is the whole reason this conversation is happening.

Here's the thing I tell every defence-adjacent buyer who calls. We can offer something most jurisdictions can't — a single export route, a single licensing authority (the Gilgit-Baltistan Mineral Investment Authority and the federal Ministry of Commerce for export approvals), and concessions that are already granted and in good standing. Sixteen of them. No native title disputes, no rainforest, no overlapping artisanal claims to negotiate around.

What we don't have yet, and I'll be honest about it, is a finished APT plant. Right now we're positioned to supply concentrate. Wolframite and scheelite concentrate at 65–70% WO3, molybdenite concentrate at 50%+ MoS2, FOB Karachi. Conversion to APT or ferro-moly is the next stage, and it's one of the things we're discussing with two prospective JV partners — one Chinese (yes, ironic), one based in the Gulf.

Logistics, because this always comes up

The road from our concession blocks down to Karachi port is roughly 1,900 km via the Karakoram Highway and the N-5. It's a 7–9 day truck haul depending on the season. Winter closures on the higher passes from December through February are real and we plan around them — stockpile at lower elevations, ship continuously from Karachi.

Alternative routing through the Khunjerab Pass into Kashgar is open for buyers who want delivery into western China. That's three days. Some of our existing jade buyers already use that route.

For European and US defence-track buyers, Karachi to Hamburg is about 22 days. Karachi to Baltimore, roughly 35. None of this is unusual. It's the same shipping math as Australian or Chilean concentrate, just with a different origin stamp — and that origin stamp is increasingly the whole point.

If you're a buyer working a defence-track supply contract and you need a second source for tungsten or molybdenum feedstock that isn't Chinese and isn't already locked into a Western major's off-take, we should talk. Bring your spec sheet. We'll send you the assay packages and the concession documentation, and you can put your own geologist on a plane.

That's usually how the serious ones start.