Almonty Confirms Molybdenum Grades at South Korea's Sangdong Mine, Matching Historical Data

What happened

Almonty Industries said drilling at its Sangdong Molybdenum Project in South Korea's Gangwon Province has returned assay grades consistent with historical data, as the company works to confirm the size and quality of a molybdenum deposit that sits beneath its flagship Sangdong tungsten mine. In a June 16, 2026 update, the company said roughly 37% of a planned 26-hole, 12,000-metre drilling campaign had been completed. Chairman, president and chief executive Lewis Black said the early results were "highly encouraging," adding that the grades "are consistent with our historical data, reinforcing our confidence in the scale and quality of the molybdenum resource at Sangdong." The confirmation work follows a 2022 maiden inferred resource estimate of 21.48 million tonnes grading 0.26% molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) for the deposit, known as Almonty Korea Moly, and comes as South Korea pushes to reduce its reliance on China, which supplies more than 90% of the country's molybdenum imports and more than 80% of its tungsten imports.

The details

Almonty Industries, a Canadian mining company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, has spent the better part of four years trying to prove that the ground beneath its Sangdong tungsten mine in South Korea holds a second, commercially viable metal. Its June 16, 2026 update said nothing found so far contradicts that. Roughly 37% of a planned 26-hole, 12,000-metre drilling campaign at the Sangdong Molybdenum Project had returned assay grades consistent with historical data, the company said, with the remaining holes still to be drilled and analyzed. Chief executive Lewis Black called the early results "highly encouraging," saying the grades "are consistent with our historical data, reinforcing our confidence in the scale and quality of the molybdenum resource at Sangdong."

The distinction between Sangdong's two metals matters here. Tungsten is the mine's flagship: Almonty describes the deposit as one of the largest outside China, with the potential to supply roughly half of the world's non-China tungsten demand once fully ramped, and commercial tungsten mining restarted there in December 2025 after roughly three decades dormant, with the operation's first phase completed in March 2026. The molybdenum resource — known internally as Almonty Korea Moly — sits in a separate geological zone beneath the tungsten orebody, hosted in quartzite near an underlying granite body rather than in the skarn rock that carries the tungsten. A 2022 maiden inferred resource estimate under the JORC Code, the industry standard for reporting mineral resources, put the deposit at 21.48 million tonnes grading 0.26% molybdenum disulfide (MoS2, the mineral form in which molybdenum is mined). The current drilling campaign is testing whether that estimate — and older, pre-JORC South Korean government figures suggesting a higher-grade zone of 16.3 million tonnes at 0.40% MoS2 within a larger 120-million-tonne resource at 0.13% MoS2 — holds up with more data, a step Almonty needs before it can move the resource toward the measured or indicated categories that typically precede a mining decision.

That path already has a buyer lined up. In January 2025, Almonty signed an exclusive offtake agreement with SeAH M&S — South Korea's largest molybdenum processor and, by its own description, the world's second-largest molybdenum oxide smelter — under which SeAH committed to purchase 100% of Sangdong's molybdenum output for the life of the mine, at a floor price of $19 a pound before treatment-charge deductions. That floor sat below the roughly $22-a-pound molybdenum spot price cited alongside the agreement, giving Almonty downside protection while SeAH locks in supply. Full-capacity output is targeted at around 5,600 tonnes a year, and Korean government historical data cited by both companies suggests the deposit could support production for as long as 60 years. Almonty has said it intends to begin producing molybdenum by the end of 2026 and, in Black's words, to start mining "without delay" once the ore body's full extent is confirmed — though that timeline still depends on drilling results still to come.

The urgency traces back to Seoul's own numbers on where its strategic minerals come from. South Korea sources more than 90% of its molybdenum imports and more than 80% of its tungsten imports from China, a concentration that leaves industries from steelmaking to semiconductors, aerospace and defense exposed to a single supplier for metals used to harden and heat-treat specialty alloys. A domestic molybdenum mine tied to a binding, price-floored offtake with the country's largest processor is a direct response to that exposure — not a complete one, since Sangdong's roughly 5,600-tonne annual target is a fraction of national demand, but a concrete step in a diversification push that, until Sangdong, had few domestic options to point to.

Why it matters

A domestic molybdenum mine tied to a binding, price-floored offtake with South Korea's largest processor is a concrete step toward reducing the country's reliance on China for more than 90% of its molybdenum imports — a dependency that touches steelmaking, semiconductors, aerospace and defense supply chains that use molybdenum-hardened alloys.