Globe and Mail ArticleBulb ban unlikely to dim tungsten boom
Old-fashioned lights account for just a tiny proportion of overall demand, sources say
RICHARD BLACKWELL
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070426.RTUNGSTEN26/TPStory/?query=tungsten
Ottawa's planned ban on incandescent light bulbs will have no impact on Canada's resurgent tungsten mining business, industry players say, because lighting makes up such a small proportion of the overall demand for the heavy metal.
In fact, tungsten mining and exploration in Canada and around the world is enjoying a boom caused by significantly higher prices for the metal, and that is not expected to wane even if more countries ban the old-fashioned bulbs that use tungsten in their filaments.
"Light bulbs are only a couple of percentage points of the consumption of tungsten," said Stephen Leahy, chief executive officer of Vancouver-based North American Tungsten Corp., Canada's only tungsten producer. Consequently the ban "will not impact the tungsten industry worldwide."
More than half of tungsten production goes into superhard alloys of steel, which are used to make cutting tools and saw blades. The metal is also increasingly used in electronic parts, and -- because it is heavy -- as a replacement for toxic lead in objects such as fishing weights. It is also used in halogen and xenon light bulbs.
But what has really buoyed the market in the last couple of years is the fact that China, which produces more than 80 per cent of the world's tungsten, has stopped exporting the material. With its manufacturing industry booming, China is keeping all its tungsten for domestic use.
When Chinese tungsten disappeared from the market in 2005, the price more than quadrupled, prompting companies in the West to start new exploration and to reinvigorate abandoned sites.
"No one looked in the West for tungsten for three decades, because of China's low prices" Mr. Leahy said. Now North American Tungsten is in the spotlight, he said, because it runs the CanTung mine in Yukon that generates about 4 per cent of the world's production.
It is also sitting on another huge deposit, the MacTung mine on the Yukon-Northwest Territories border, that has about 10 per cent of the world's known tungsten resources. Mr. Leahy said that mine should be in production in a few years.
Other Canadian players are exploring for tungsten, including Playfair Mining Ltd. of Vancouver, which is developing deposits in Newfoundland, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
Playfair president Neil Briggs said these sites were explored the last time tungsten prices were high, more than two decades ago, but were essentially abandoned when prices fell after China pumped up its exports. "We were able to pick them up fairly cheaply."
Some Canadian-based firms are also working on properties outside the country.
Primary Metals Inc. of Vancouver, for example, owns the Panasqueira tungsten mine in Portugal, a mine that has operated on and off for more than a century. It has enough resources left to produce tungsten for several years, company director James Robertson said.
Dynacor Mines Inc. of Laval, Que. expects to start production at a mine in Peru later this year, while Geodex Minerals Ltd. of Vancouver is exploring a deposit in New Brunswick.
Tiberon Minerals Ltd. , a Toronto company that was traded until recently on the Toronto Stock Exchange, had a 70-per-cent interest in a tungsten mining project in Vietnam, but Tiberon was bought by a Vietnam company in February.