Price of tungsten, sulfur and helium
Almonty’s tungsten mine in Sangdong, South Korea, in March 2026.
Almonty
BEIJING — The Iran war is squeezing a global commodity market already under pressure from China’s export controls and stockpiling efforts.
Prices of three niche elements – tungsten, sulfur and helium – have risen sharply in recent weeks.
While no commodity is as widely traded as oil, the rise shows how the ripple effects of conflict in the Middle East could constrain the production of semiconductors that power the advancement of artificial intelligence.
Tungsten, a metal almost as hard as diamondcreates this electrical connection in the core It consists of a semiconductor chip. sulfuric acidA. sulfur byproductcleans chip wafer. Helium enables the smooth production of semiconductors due to the gas. Prevents unwanted chemical reactions in the production process.
These are just some of the ways the three elements have become critical to modern manufacturing, including defense.
Even before the start of the Iran war on February 28, Beijing began increasing its control over critical supplies, in part because tensions with the United States have increased over the past few years.
Chinese started restricting tungsten exports a little over a year ago and we called in December Stricter restrictions were placed on sulfuric acid exports. Helium, a gas that is difficult to store, saw China’s import volume increase by 15.7% in 2025, following a nearly 65% increase in 2024, according to Wind Information.
The Iran war and the resulting restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical Middle East shipping route for energy and chemicals, have exacerbated existing shortages and turned some oversupply situations into undersupply.
Prices of all three commodities rose more than oil in some cases. The widely used fossil fuel rose more than 50% in March, giving Brent a record month.
“While the Chinese supply chain is seen as more resilient than many of its peers, the risk of disruption to chemicals as raw materials is higher than expected for manufacturers in selected segments, based on feedback.” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report late last week, citing nearly 40 commodity-related meetings and field visits in China.
Tungsten
Tungsten reached a record high above $3,000 late last week, marking an increase of over 50% for the month and its price has more than tripled since the end of December. This is based on the industry benchmark called “ammonium coin tungstate (APT)” in metric ton units, or MTU, from Fastmarket, as quoted by the tungsten miner. Almonty.
Almonty officially reopened a large tungsten mine in Sangdong, South Korea, earlier this month and plans to begin producing some tungsten at a project in the US state of Montana this year.
Lewis Black, the company’s CEO, told CNBC that the defense industry’s tungsten demand has been “extremely strong” since the beginning of last year, but there has been no significant change despite the Iran war.
“There’s no supplies to stockpile. That’s probably the biggest change,” he said.
Sulfur
The price of sulfuric acid in Africa is now at least 30 percent higher than before the war and is still rising, Goldman Sachs analysts said, citing a local Chinese miner in Africa.
Other reviews point to a milder increase in prices.
Chinese sulfur prices, including cost and freight, rose nearly 13% from early March to $621 per tonne as of March 26, according to S&P Global Platts.
“An effective 2-3 month blockade would likely translate into a severe supply shock, especially as freight/insurance rates remain high and cargo originating from the Middle East becomes more difficult to transport,” Pan Yuya, S&P Global Energy principal analyst for sulfur and phosphate feedstocks, and Isaac Zhao, S&P Global Energy senior principal analyst for China fertilizers, wrote in a March 20 note. he said.
About 56% of China’s sulfur imports in 2025 will come from the Middle East, S&P analysts said.
“Even before the Middle East conflict, sulfur prices were rising sharply as the market tightened. With sulfur prices now at new record highs, the ‘super squeeze’ in supply for this highly uncertain commodity warrants further scrutiny,” HSBC analysts said in a March 16 report.
Helium
Helium prices have nearly doubled since the start of the Iran war, according to Fitch Ratings.
Shelley Jang, Fitch’s director of corporate ratings for Asia-Pacific, said it was difficult to pinpoint industrywide prices precisely because much of the trading takes place through long-term proprietary contracts between industrial gas suppliers and producers.
Iran’s missile attacks this month A major industrial center in Qatar, which produces about a third of the world’s helium, was paralyzed.
This means helium supplies may not be restored any time soon, said Christopher Ecclestone, director and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company.
In an indication of the market contraction, helium prices in China’s Henan province reversed this year’s decline, rising from 545 yuan ($78.85) to 600 yuan ($86.81) per bottle on Feb. 28, according to Wind Information.
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It is the latest supply chain disruption to shake global markets, which face similar shocks from shortages caused by the Iran war, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Covid-19 pandemic. This has pushed companies to diversify and accelerate plans to stockpile countries such as China.
“Access to the supply of certain physical materials for which production and processing are concentrated in China will be a more frequent topic Rhodium Group said in a March 24 report: Negotiations with Beijing.
Limited price transparency also means shortages may be worse than current figures indicate.
Ecclestone said tungsten and helium prices were rising, “but there’s no one on the buying side saying ‘oh my god, we don’t have enough product’.” “Defense contractors should have tungsten tanks, but they don’t.”
“The world has become lazy. It compares life to a supermarket, thinking the product is a packet of corn flakes or a few tons of sulfuric acid,” he said. “Several aisles of the commodity supermarket have been cut.”
