Carbide price has witnessed an unprecedented skyrocketing trend since 2025, turning tungsten carbide into the undisputed “price surge king” of the metal market in 2026. This upsurge has triggered a severe cost crisis for downstream enterprises, accelerated the reshuffling of the entire industrial chain, and is reshaping the competitive landscape of the global tungsten carbide industry.

According to data released by Chinese platform China Tungsten Online, tungsten concentrate prices approached the RMB 550,000/ton mark, ammonium paratungstate prices stood at a high of RMB 800,000/ton. These staggering figures fully reflect the intensity of this round of price surge and its far-reaching impact on the industry.

Tungsten Products Price Change as of January 29, 2026

Chinese expert Su Bin, head of the R&D Service Center of Caixin Futures Co., Ltd., stated in an interview with the Securities Daily that “the continuous rise in tungsten metal prices this round is not a short-term speculation, but the result of the resonance of three logics: rigid supply contraction, explosive growth of emerging demands, and the prominent attribute of strategic resources”. The skyrocketing carbide price is precisely the concrete manifestation of this triple logic.

Figure 1: Impact of Two New Chinese and US Regulations on Tungsten Materials and Carbide Price

As the world’s largest tungsten producer, China accounted for 83% of global output in 2024. China has implemented strict total volume control over tungsten mining since 1991, when tungsten was listed as a national protected mining species. In 2025, the first batch of tungsten ore mining quotas in China was 58,000 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 6.45%. Coupled with increasingly stringent environmental protection inspections in China, a large number of small and medium-sized mines have been shut down, leading to a sharp contraction in the industry’s effective supply.

Meanwhile, the average grade of domestic tungsten ore in China dropped from 0.42% a decade ago to 0.28%, and the increase in mining depth has significantly raised mining costs, forcing some high-cost mines in China to suspend production.

Overseas supply is also unable to fill the gap—except for the Bakuta tungsten mine in Kazakhstan, which can contribute a small amount of production capacity, other overseas projects are progressing slowly due to capital and technical constraints and are not expected to mass-produce until 2028. In addition, China’s tungsten recycling rate is only 15.5%, far lower than the global average of 30%-35%, making it impossible to alleviate supply pressure through recycled tungsten. By 2026, the social inventory of tungsten products in China has dropped to a five-year low, only enough to meet 15-20 days of consumption, creating a “hard-to-find” market situation.

Traditional demand for tungsten carbide is steadily recovering, while emerging fields have become the main driving force for the skyrocketing carbide price. The penetration rate of tungsten wire in China’s photovoltaic industry has surged from 20% in 2024 to 60% in 2026, driven by the trend of silicon wafers thinning from 170μm to below 120μm. Global photovoltaic installed capacity is expected to reach 500GW, and this sector alone has driven tungsten demand to exceed 5,000 tons.

The AI computing power revolution has also boosted demand for high-precision tungsten carbide tools. A person from Chinese enterprise Zhongwu High-tech told Cailian Press that to meet the rapidly growing demand for high-end precision micro-tools in the AI computing power market, the production capacity of ultra-long aspect ratio precision micro-tools for AI PCBs of its subsidiary Jinzhou Company is no longer sufficient to meet market needs, and it plans to invest in a new special production line with a planned annual capacity increase of 63 million pieces. Chinese enterprise Okey Precision also stated that its CNC cutting tool park currently has a production capacity of 1,300 tons of rods, with the ability to quickly build PCB drill rod production capacity and supply capacity.

In addition, rigid demands from military and aerospace fields are growing rapidly. Geopolitical conflicts have driven a year-on-year surge of 42% in orders for armor-piercing projectiles and missile guidance systems. The vacuum chamber walls of nuclear fusion devices must use tungsten materials, and the global demand for tungsten for nuclear fusion exceeded 5,500 tons in 2026. These high-end applications have extremely high requirements for tungsten purity and performance, and only Chinese enterprises can achieve large-scale supply, further pushing up the price elasticity of tungsten carbide.

Figure 2: Application of Tungsten Materials in Controlled Nuclear Fusion Reactors

In late 2025, the global entry into the interest rate cut cycle has led a large amount of capital to flow into the scarce resource market, and tungsten, as a strategic material, has become a hot target for capital pursuit. Chinese enterprises such as Zhangyuan Tungsten Industry have continuously raised product quotations, with each ton increased by RMB 12,000 to RMB 30,000, boosting the bullish sentiment in the market. The cost pressure is also transmitted downstream along the industrial chain—South Korean tungsten hexafluoride manufacturers have even proposed a price increase of 70%-90% to customers such as Samsung Electronics.

The continuous surge in carbide price has brought a fatal blow to small and medium-sized carbide enterprises, especially those in China, pushing them into an unprecedented survival dilemma. The price of key raw materials such as tungsten carbide powder and cobalt powder has quadrupled in the past 12 months, and the cost of raw materials accounts for more than 70% of the total production cost of downstream enterprises.

A Chinese tool industry practitioner in Hunan said in an interview with Cailian Press that “this round of raw material price increases has lasted significantly longer than previous years, putting forward higher requirements for the cash flow of tool enterprises. Small and medium-sized tool companies are facing problems of capital turnover and relatively single products, making it difficult to effectively cope with the sharp rise in raw material prices”. He further analyzed that “maintaining the operation of a small processing factory used to require RMB 10 million, but now it may take RMB 40 million to maintain the original operation scale”.

Small and medium-sized enterprises lack the advantage of stockpiling raw materials at low prices. When receiving orders, they have to purchase raw materials at high prices, resulting in a serious inversion of costs and revenues. Their product gross profit margin has fallen below 10%, and some enterprises even dare not take orders due to the continuous rise in raw material prices. Chinese enterprise Huarui Precision stated in a letter that “the continuous high rise of cemented carbide raw materials has become more obvious.

The prices of main raw materials le carbure de tungstène powder and metal cobalt powder have quadrupled in the past 12 months, and all links in the industrial chain are under pressure, resulting in a further increase in the company’s production costs. The existing sales price can no longer reasonably cover the cost pressure. The company has made every effort to digest the costs through internal optimization and efficiency improvement, but the cost pressure is still large”. In addition, as terminal customers have higher requirements for product quality and performance with the price increase of cutting tools, the product quality of small and medium-sized enterprises is difficult to meet the market demand, leading to a further loss of market share.

The shortage of funds, single product structure, and insufficient anti-risk ability make small and medium-sized enterprises unable to cope with the sharp fluctuation of carbide price. With the depletion of low-cost tungsten carbide inventory, more and more small and medium-sized Chinese enterprises have been forced to stop production. Some enterprises even reduce product quality to cut costs for survival, triggering the phenomenon of “bad money driving out good money” in the market.

In the face of the skyrocketing carbide price, leading enterprises in the industry, especially Chinese ones, have taken a series of measures to resolve the cost pressure and seize market opportunities, showing a strong ability to resist risks.

Leading Chinese enterprises such as Huarui Precision have established a sound raw material price tracking system. On the one hand, the company controls raw material cost expenditures by signing framework agreements with major raw material suppliers and prepaying the purchase price to lock in the price and quantity, so as to obtain more favorable purchase prices in the market.

On the other hand, the company adopts an advance stockpiling strategy to reserve an appropriate amount of raw materials to cope with the possible continuous rise in prices in the future. Data statistics show that as of the third quarter of last year, against the background of rising tungsten carbide prices, most Chinese tool enterprises, including Xinyue Co., Ltd., Dingtai High-tech, Okey Precision and Huarui Precision, have taken the initiative to stock up to lock in costs, promoting the increase in inventory scale.

Figure 3: Tungsten Product Line

Leading Chinese enterprises are actively expanding into high-end product fields to improve product gross profit margin. A person from the Securities Department of Chinese enterprise Okey Precision said that “the company’s goal is to shift its products to high-end fields. With the rising demand for applications in downstream mid-to-high-end fields, the company’s capacity utilization rate has been increasing in the second half of the year”.

Chinese enterprise Huarui Precision stated that “on the basis of consolidating the dominant position in the cemented carbide CNC cutting tool market, the company has prioritized basic material technology research, entered the non-tungsten new material fields such as cermets, ceramics and superhard materials, and further enriched the company’s product line.

At the same time, through the development of new product projects, the company has expanded into the fields of tool systems and precision complex composite tools, further enriching the company’s product line”. Chinese enterprise Zhongwu High-tech has invested in the construction of a special production line for ultra-long aspect ratio precision micro-tools for AI PCBs to meet the rapidly growing market demand.

Major Chinese cutting tool manufacturers such as Hengfeng Tools have appropriately increased the sales price of some products, transferring part of the cost pressure to downstream customers. A Chinese tool industry insider told Cailian Press that “the price of tungsten carbide has been rising for nearly a year, which is rare in previous years, directly driving the intensive price increase in the tool industry”. Thanks to the improvement of product performance and the expansion of product categories, these Chinese enterprises have maintained a good growth momentum in production and sales volume.

The person from Chinese enterprise Huarui Precision said that “downstream demand has recovered, and at the same time, the company’s product performance has been continuously improved, the product range has become increasingly perfect, the channels have been steadily developed, and the production and sales volume have increased year-on-year”. The order scheduling cycle has been extended from more than one month to 2-3 months, and the profit margin is expected to be further improved in the first half of 2026.

In addition, cemented carbide enterprises in Zhuzhou, Hunan and Zigong, Sichuan of China have hedged the impact through long-term order price locking, production line cost optimization and high-end product price increases, with orders scheduled until the first quarter of 2026. Their total sales volume in 2025 increased by 8% year-on-year, and operating income increased by 22% year-on-year.

The carbide price surge has become a catalyst for the reshuffling of the tungsten carbide industry, and the future industry pattern will show the characteristics of “the strong will always be strong” and the continuous improvement of industry concentration.

The price surge has brought a “ice and fire” experience to the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. Leading Chinese upstream resource-based enterprises such as Xiamen Tungsten Industry and Zhangyuan Tungsten Industry have seen their net profits increase by 180% and 220% year-on-year respectively, and Chinese enterprise Zhongwu High-tech’s non-net profit has surged by 407.52% year-on-year. Chinese enterprises with mining costs of only RMB 100,000-150,000/ton are enjoying the huge profits brought by the price surge. Leading enterprises have obvious advantages in capital, technology, and supply chain management. They can lock in raw material costs through advance stockpiling, improve product competitiveness through technological innovation, and further expand their market share by virtue of high-value-added products. Small and medium-sized enterprises with weak anti-risk ability will be gradually eliminated or merged by leading enterprises, and the industry concentration will be significantly improved.

The layout of non-tungsten new materials and overall cutting solution R&D direction by Chinese enterprises is in precise line with the trend of China’s manufacturing industry transformation and upgrading and high-end manufacturing development. It can not only reduce the dependence on a single tungsten metal industrial chain and improve the ability to resist cyclical price fluctuations, but also seize high-end market share by virtue of technical barriers, providing a model for domestic tool enterprises in China to transform from “manufacturing” to “intelligent manufacturing”. The cost crisis brought by the price surge has forced the entire tungsten carbide industry in China to accelerate transformation and upgrading. Chinese enterprises will increase investment in research and development, focus on the research of basic material technology, and develop new materials and new processes to reduce the dependence on traditional tungsten resources.

A person from Chinese enterprise Zhongwu High-tech said that the demand for tungsten in downstream application fields will continue to grow, and it is expected that the price will remain high in the future. Affected by the rigid supply contraction in China and the sustained growth of emerging demand, the carbide price is expected to maintain a high level and fluctuate strongly in the long run. The supply gap of tungsten products will continue to expand, and the price center will be further raised. Enterprises that can master the core technology of raw materials and high-end product manufacturing, especially Chinese ones, will occupy a dominant position in the future market competition.

Figure 4: Distribution Map of Global Tungsten Ore Reserves

The 2026 tungsten carbide price surge is a comprehensive result of supply-demand imbalance, strategic resource attributes and capital speculation, which has triggered a profound reshuffle of the industry. Small and medium-sized enterprises are facing an unprecedented survival crisis, while leading enterprises, especially Chinese ones, are seizing the opportunity to expand their market share through cost control and structural adjustment. In the future, the tungsten carbide industry will enter a new stage of development with high concentration, high technology content and high added value. For enterprises, only by focusing on technological innovation, optimizing product structure and enhancing the ability to resist risks can they survive and develop in the era of high carbide price.