Up next is a name we have probably all heard of by now: Almonty Industries, a dominant force in the tungsten world. With key operations in Portugal, as well as South Korea, this company sits at the core of a metal driving defense, driving tech, and innovation. Almonty is not here to play catch-up, they're here to lead it. Now joining us is Sophie Nguyen, Business Development Manager and Financial Planner for Almonty, dynamic, forward-thinking, and ready to pull back the curtain on Almonty's powerful growth story. Sophie, welcome, welcome, welcome. I pass the baton to you. The stage is yours.
Thanks for having us, Lindsay. It's good to see you again. Thank you for the wonderful introduction. Let me share my screen. I promise my screen should be visible right now.
I think it just did. There you go.
Perfect. So, Lewis would have wanted to present it today, but unfortunately he had to go to Washington, very urgently. So, it would be me today, but I promise Lewis will be here next time. Here you can see our Sangdong operation in South Korea. I'm going to get to it in a second, but it will be one of the biggest tungsten projects in the world. In fact, it's the biggest processing plant that is getting built since the 1970s. It's the second largest processing plant in the world, besides in Kazakhstan, which a Chinese company is building right now. Let me go a step back. Almonty Industries is listed on the NASDAQ, Canadian Stock Exchange, Australian Stock Exchange, and in Frankfurt. We had, as of yesterday evening, a market cap of $1.5 billion and a share price of $7.
We're headquartered in Toronto, but we are planning to move the headquarters to the United States very shortly, preferably by the end of the year. Almonty has five projects. Two projects in Spain, Los Santos, which is in Carrac Canals, and also Valtreixal, which is our development project, very close to Los Santos. We have Portugal. Portugal is our knowledge hub. Portugal is in production since 136 years. It's one of the oldest mines in the world, and it's definitely the oldest tungsten mine in the world that is still running and successfully operating. It's one of the only mines that has ever survived the big crash in the 1970s and 1980s, because in the 1970s and 1980s, China was oversupplying the market, crashing the prices, and there were only two mines in the Western world that survived.
One was Portugal, our Panasqueira asset, and the other one is in Austria, Mittersill. Portugal was able to survive because we were able to develop new technologies. We were able to adjust to the market. We were able to fine grade our production, and we gained so much knowledge, which allowed us to basically develop Sangdong in South Korea, which will be one of the biggest tungsten assets in the world. It's important to note tungsten is in everything. You can't drill a mining project without tungsten because tungsten is the hardest, the highest density, and the most heat resistant metal. You have it in all the drill bits. Every robotic application has some sort of tungsten alloy in the joints and everything. On the other side, you have a huge defense and military application, used tungsten.
For example, all these artillery shells, the penetrators, like when you have huge tungsten, huge tank bullets inside, you have a tungsten coil and that is usually what penetrates everything you can imagine. Right now there's a huge demand for tungsten. The interesting thing is 83% of the tungsten market is controlled by China, 5% by North Korea and Russia. These three countries together are controlling almost 90% of the global tungsten market, leaving almost no one in the Western world. Whereas on the other side, China is only using about 40% of the tungsten, but supplying more than 83%. It brings me to my next slide. China has announced in December 2024 restrictions on so-called dual-use material. Dual-use means everything somehow related to defense and defense applications. In February, they have increased these export restrictions and specifically included tungsten and molybdenum.
As for our knowledge, no one has ever received a permit from China to receive tungsten in the U.S., because essentially companies have to provide so much information, which would be almost a risk out of national security reasons that no one ever is able to fulfill the application to receive material out of China. In fact, what we see right now is China actively buying tungsten and tungsten oxide on the market, basically squeezing the market, which is quite the opposite of what happened 34 years ago. On the other side, the D.O.D., the Department of Defense or the Department of Foreign in the United States, is restricting the use of tungsten from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran from 2027 on for any military application or any other application related to the military.
Meaning essentially, the United States is cutting themselves off from 90% of the tungsten production in the world. That is actually the interesting thing about Sangdong. Almonty has the rare opportunity to solve the supply chain risk for the European Union, for the United States, and some other countries. In fact, we have been contacted by the House of Congress in the United States and received a letter acknowledging Sangdong as the potential solver to supply chain risks. Also, Almonty is a source of information for the tungsten, because there's essentially not much information out there. Almonty will be one of the only transparent, non-restricted, and especially conflict-free sources of tungsten from the Western world. We have existing off-take agreements with Japan, the U.S., EU, and we always focus on these markets. We never had agreements and trading deals with China in the past.
In fact, for our South Korean operation, we have a 15-year off-take agreement, which is floor price-based, meaning we're secure to the downside because we always make sure we have a minimum revenue incoming by the floor price, which allows us to successfully operate the mine in any market condition. We profit on full upside. That was the basis to develop Sangdong in South Korea and enable us to receive a Tier 1 project financing from KFW. This off-take agreement is roughly for 100% of phase I. Phase I will come online probably this year, by the end of this quarter. We expect output and data generated in the fourth quarter already from South Korea. As soon as phase I is in production, we're going to double the production.
From 640,000 tons of throughput, we go to 1.2 million tons, essentially almost doubling the output of material, giving us another around 230,000 MTU of tungsten. What's important, besides that, we just raised $90 million in July for a tungsten oxide facility. Essentially, we produce tungsten concentrate in South Korea, and we will be producing tungsten oxide in the second step, increasing our sales multiple or sales payable factor, and therefore generating more revenue over the entire life of the mine, which is probably going to be more than 45 years. Just to visualize again how much of the production is covered by Russia, China, and North Korea, it's important to understand again, these countries will not be able to deliver to the United States from 2027, whereas China already has restricted the production. That is why Almonty is the big counterweight to China.
Going back to our priorities and our timeline, we have started a couple of weeks ago a very large scale drill program at our molybdenum asset. We have the big tungsten ore body in South Korea, and just underneath, they're almost adjacent. I think that this is like 100 meters, about 300 foot in U.S. measures. Right now we are drilling the molybdenum asset. We already have an NI 43 compliant resource. The drill program is not to expand the resource. The drill program is to define the mine plan so we can potentially push the asset towards producing molybdenum. We have an off-take agreement with SeAH . It's the second biggest Korean steel producer that is government backed.
We have an off-take agreement similar to the tungsten one with $19 floor price, which will allow us to operate successfully and economically in any market condition, which was the cornerstone for this molybdenum asset. The important thing is the off-take agreement is about 100% of the future output of the molybdenum mine. Next up, the re-domiciling into the United States. I had mentioned before we are a Canadian headquartered company. We have prepared at the beginning of the year the re-domiciling into the United States. We will be the only U.S.-based tungsten producer probably by the end of the year and from 2026 on out. phase I, we expect completion of phase I by the end of the year, output and data generated in Q4 already.
Phase II, as I mentioned before, will be built in 2026 and gradually increase to 1.2 million tons, which will essentially double the output and our economics. Additionally, we have our L4 project in Spain. L4 is the extension of the Panasqueira mine. Of our 136-year-old mine in Portugal, we have the capability to go a level deeper, access a new ore body, double the grade, and improve the throughput capacity and the mining rate, and therefore more than double the output of the mine, and essentially provide tungsten either to the United States or the European Union, and therefore even increasing the portfolio and the tungsten production of the company itself. Going back to the market and the production, tungsten has been declared by the European Union as the metal, the economically most important metal. Molybdenum is a number five or six in here.
It's important to know if you see the chart, the split of the applications. The tungsten is in everything. We need it for automotives, we need it for batteries, we need it for semiconductors, which is a huge market. Essentially, we need it for defense, which is right now the market with the biggest growth we see. The semiconductor market is growing as well as all the AI tools here right now. The tungsten price itself was very favorable this year for us. In the last three years, the tungsten price was always between $300 and $350. Basically, with expanding every crash that most commodities were living, so gold, copper, silver, they all had crashes. Tungsten was always remaining stable, but it was also never outbreaking.
Now we see finally the tungsten price breaking out to over $600 already, which is, in my personal point of view, a step that we were all waiting for very long. We still run our economic models internally at $350 to $400 per MTU to make sure that we will be able to successfully operate even if the price would come down. At $600 or even $700, as the price is right now, our economic models are very, very strong. We see actually a basis right now where the price would settle, in my personal view, between $500 and $600 in the long run with all the geopolitical tensions right now. One quick step, we expect a supply gap in the short term. For the next three or four years, we expect a supply gap.
That will be solved by turning on Sangdong in South Korea and increasing the production by 2027. By then, we see the supply gap to come down a bit, but there will still be a shortage even though Sangdong will be in full operation. As I said before, and I think it's important to bring that up again, China is controlling 82% or 83% of the tungsten market, but using only a minor bit. Right now, we see China being a buyer and a recruiter instead of being a seller at the moment. Quickly moving back to the military. The U.S., for example, has raised the military budget and is increasing it from $820 billion to $850 billion. In April, they raised the budget to $1 trillion for the first time. Germany is the same. Germany is increasing their budget by around 20% from 2023 to 2024.
The goal is to reach 3.5% of the GDP by 2027. There's an extra EUR 100 billion special fund for the Bundeswehr organization. They changed the constitution. France is going through the same process. The U.K. is going through the same process. Japan as well. We see a very strong move in the defense sector and the militarization of the countries. One of those is essentially tungsten, because tungsten is used for bulletproof coverage of tanks. It's used for hypersonic missiles. It's used for artillery shells. It's used for tungsten penetrators, which is a very big market in the U.S. You can't really subsidize tungsten. There isn't really much application. You can use completely uranium for some applications, but in most firms, you have to use tungsten.
What we do to participate in the market, we had a very strong strategic partnership with American Defense International, which is the biggest lobbyist group for the defense sector in the United States, which allowed us to gain access to very important people. Lewis was able to join the Critical Minerals Forum in May 2025, where he was speaking in a U.S.-sponsored conference about the tungsten market for the very first time. As I said before, in June 2025, we have received a recognition letter from the U.S. Congress recognizing Sangdong as the potential solver of the supply chain in the United States. Let's jump back to our project plan. As I said, phase I is going to open at the end of this year. It's initially a full production that will create 640,000 tons of tungsten ore, which will be processed to 230,000 MTU.
One year later, we are planning to add another 560,000 tons of ore to reach 1.2 million tons, almost doubling the output. As I said, everything from phase I is off-taken by GDP, with a 15-year off-take with a floor price, which is covering us against market crashes. The additional production will be used for our future tungsten oxide facility. The tungsten oxide facility will be very close to our tungsten concentrate processing plant in South Korea. We will, in South Korea, reprocess the material from tungsten concentrate to tungsten oxide and therefore increase the sales price and our multiples and our margins. That material will be delivered to the United States, potentially the European Union, and South Korea if needed. The fourth project, or the second biggest project, is Portugal. As I said before, we have the L4 extension here.
We essentially try to increase the throughput slightly and double the grade by accessing a new ore body. We have to do minor drilling to reconfirm the ore body, but that's all the work we have to do. Quickly to show you the massive ore body of Sangdong. You can see the Eiffel Tower and the One World Trade Center of New York compared to the ore body. The ore body is around 5-6 kilometers in depth. There are pre-existing shafts, galleries from a previous operation in the 1950s to 1994. In fact, this mine has been the most important tungsten mine in the post-World War II phases. Actually, Sangdong was generating around 50% or 60% of the net export revenue of the South Korean government in the 1960s.
Most biggest steel companies in South Korea, like POSCO and other companies, are originating from that mine because that mine was not only producing tungsten, but also producing molybdenum and bismuth. That's one of the largest ore bodies in the world. We have one of the lowest costs. Our costs in our study are $126 per MTU compared to the current price of $615 per MTU. We have one of the highest grades, which is driving our economic capability. We also have one of the highest recovery. It's important to say we are using a flotation system and a gravity system, which allows us to turn on the machines and ramp up the production within two or three months only and reach full capacity very soon.
That's part of the flotation, which is a bit more complicated than gravity, but we have run the pilot plant for three years in South Korea, giving us a lot of data, background, and information. We have a perfect basis to start the operations with all the information we already have. We tested the pilot plant with different water qualities, temperatures, and hardness of water. We were very well prepared to turn on the machines. The potential life of the mine is 45 years based on the full throughput of phase II. It's important to say everything is fully permitted and fully drawn down, and we are fully financed for the phase I construction. Quickly jumping back to the off-take agreement, we have a 15-year, as I mentioned, off-take agreement with GTP. The floor price is at $235 per MTU. There is no cap to the upside.
We have a molybdenum off-take agreement, SeAH. It's a government-backed steel producer. $19 per pound floor price. The price for molybdenum right now is at $26. We have a government-backed senior project financed from KFW. It's a 6.25-year loan with a three-month SOFR overnight rate, plus 2.3% of risk premium, which is really low compared to other companies. We were able to receive a super strong KFW project finance loan because we had a GTP on-state agreement with a 15-year guarantee. Going back to Portugal, Portugal is a really important asset. It's not generating a lot of revenue and a lot of income for us, but it's the main knowledge hub for us. All this information, all the knowledge, all the experts are in Portugal in our mine. Essentially, you don't have many mines in the Western world. That's why tungsten is very hard to process.
Tungsten is not about, for example, lithium, rare earth, they're not really rare. You can find deposits everywhere in the world, but tungsten is very rare. It's also extremely hard to process because it's very brittle. Because we have Portugal, we developed different technologies. We have tested different ways of blasting, crushing, and processing, which allowed us to gain essentially a big knowledge to be able to operate in South Korea. Portugal is our library to be able to produce successfully in South Korea. A lot of engineers, students, geologists from all over the world came to Portugal to visit the mines just to learn more about how we process tungsten. Quickly jumping back to the molybdenum market in a few seconds, because I think time is running out. The tungsten is very well split.
We have like 40% produced in China, another around 40% from South America, 30% from the U.S. Our molybdenum project in South Korea has one of the highest rates in the world compared to existing operation projects. The price of molybdenum right now is at $26. We have a floor price at $19, which you can see in the chart. We expect very great news from our molybdenum project in the future. As I said, we just started the mine plant drilling for this asset a few weeks ago. Quickly giving you a brief overview. We have Lewis Black, the CEO. He is the cornerstone of Almonty. He was able to build the company. He actually was buying another tungsten asset in the past. He sold it for 21 times earnings.
He had a lot of experience in the tungsten market, and he was able to build Almonty from scratch in a time when no one was interested in tungsten. Right now, you can see the share price is really well-charted. We went from like $1 to almost $10 yesterday, Canadian. All of that is because of Lewis's great work of building the company. After he dropped a Tier 1 project finance, gathering one of the best projects in the world. All of that is the basis for a successful future. We're going to develop everything we can and develop other projects to successfully deliver and satisfy our shareholders. We have Brian Fox, who we just added to our as a CFO in August. He is a U.S.-based CFO with a big experience in the U.S. GAAP. He will lead the transition to the re-domiciling.
We also have General Pernod in our Board of Directors and Alan Estevez. General Pernod is a four-star general of the U.S. Army, and Alan Estevez is the former Undersecretary of Commerce and Industry under the Biden-Harris administration. These two people are very strong to bring us to the government, enabling contact. They're well above our pay grade, but they were so fascinated by the story and the future of the tungsten market that they joined our Board of Directors. Quickly coming back, I think that's the last slide I have for the gross margins. As I said, internally we are calculating a $350 to $400 per MTU, to be conservative, at any time. We expect a gross margin of 50% to 60%, even at $350 per MTU only, and a net income margin of 30% to 40%.
You can imagine how these margins look like at the current market price. We don't want to overpromote the story, so that's why we always calculate on a very reasonable and conservative basis. That was my presentation. Thank you very much for listening, and I give it back to Lindsay.
Thank you so much, Sophie. So much insight there, and we really, really appreciate that. There are quite a few questions that have come in, so I'm going to throw them over to you. The first one is, if you are planning or are you planning to spin off the molybdenum asset in a separate vehicle?
That is definitely possible. We're exploring different potential solutions here. We did not fix anything on that period. I think that would be news maybe in the future, but nothing I can speak of right now.
Okay. Now, I know that you mentioned it briefly by the end of the year, but is there any fixed date for production on the Sangdong Tungsten Mine right now?
As I said, we're focusing on the fourth quarter with a transition point where we produce output and data for the first time. It's important to know it's not about running to the finish line. We are building the project very stable, very strongly. We make sure that everything will be running perfectly. We are testing every machine already. We're testing the crusher, we're testing the mills, everything, to make sure that everything, as soon as we turn on the machines, will run perfectly. It's more about making sure that everything will run smoothly as soon as we turn on the machines instead of rushing to the finish line and having a fixed date.
Right. Okay. What about your move to the U.S.? I mean, when will the process of becoming a U.S. company be complete?
We expect the transition to be with the change into the new year. We expect to be a U.S. company by January 1st, 2026. That will allow us to only have a U.S. GAAP reconciliation for the last two years instead of three years. It makes more sense to have a 2025 year for us and 2026 U.S. GAAP-based accountability.
Okay. These are all really great answers. Thank you everyone for actually stepping in and just asking your questions. I know that there is a lot of buzz around Almonty Industries right now. One of the big questions obviously is, Mr. Lewis Black isn't here. Can you give any insights as to what he's in Washington, for at this point?
I wish I could tell you. I think it's self-explanatory that I can't at this point in time. He's definitely in Washington for very important projects. He would have loved to be here and made it possible, which shows the importance of Washington.
Absolutely. We have a little bit more time, so I'm going to actually ask you a few more of these questions here. Now, Sophie, global tungsten demand is skyrocketing, and we all know competition is very fierce. How is Almonty ensuring it not only secures supply, but also captures the highest margins while protecting against geopolitical risk here?
That's a very good question. Let's go to Portugal, for example. In Portugal, we usually have one-year contracts, and we usually negotiate them in the third or fourth quarter of the year, making sure we always have the most up-to-date and most recent terms in our contracts for supply of the Portuguese material. We very carefully select our customers for the year 2026. We haven't announced anything yet, but by that, we make sure that we don't fix us into very long-term contracts and also be able to, how do I say it, shift the production from the U.S., European Union, whatever is needed at the moment. I think we'll be able to announce soon to be our customers for 2026. That's going to ensure, and that's a process of ensuring that we always receive the best price and the best terms and contracts.
For the Sangdong delivery contract, the off-take agreement, we have a 15-year off-take agreement, which was very necessary for the Tier 1 project finance and the basis for the construction and the future completion of the Sangdong mine. We are covered to the downside, but we have the full upside. In my personal view, that's the best scenario we have in terms of contract. There's actually a very rare type of contract in the Critical Miner space. We only have seen in July, with Mountain Pass announcing their floor price-based contract, which was the second after Mountain Tier ever having a floor price contract. Lewis was always making sure we have the best possible contracts to move on with our delivery.
Sophie, thank you so much for your time. This has been so great to just sit and actually talk with you. That is all the time that we have for Almonty Industries, but you can definitely head over to their website, almonty.com, to just learn more about their story and really what's coming down the pipeline for you. Sophie, thank you again for all of your time, and we will definitely be chatting with you soon.
Thank you very much, Lindsay. See you soon.