Tungsten Price Surge: Beyond PV and Military, Tricone Bits and Other Drilling Tools Face Challenges

Recently, tungsten prices have witnessed a historic surge. As of early March 2026, the price of tungsten powder has soared nearly 5 times compared with a year ago, and the price of black tungsten concentrate has increased by more than 550%, making it the brightest star in the non-ferrous metal sector. This upward trend is not a short-term speculation, but driven by a hard gap formed by supply contraction and demand explosion. It has not only rewritten the pattern of the tungsten industrial chain, but also brought chain impacts to the drilling tool industry relying on tungsten raw materials, such as tricone bits.

Known as the "teeth of industry", tungsten is characterized by high hardness and wear resistance, and is the core raw material of cemented carbide, which is the key component of tricone bits and other drilling tools. As the core equipment for oil drilling and mining, tricone bits require a large amount of tungsten carbide for their crowns and wear-resistant parts. The cost of tungsten raw materials accounts for 15%-25% of the production cost of drilling tools. The continuous surge in tungsten prices has directly raised the threshold for drilling tool manufacturing.

The core logic of this round of tungsten price increase is the imbalance between supply and demand: on the supply side, the domestic tungsten ore mining quota has been tightened, environmental supervision has become stricter, a large number of small and medium-sized mines have withdrawn, the release of new overseas production capacity has been slow, and coupled with the tightening of export controls, the global tungsten supply has remained tight; on the demand side, the demand in emerging fields such as photovoltaic tungsten wire, military stockpiling and semiconductors has exploded, while the demand for traditional drilling tools and cutting tools has steadily recovered, further amplifying the supply-demand contradiction.

For tricone bit and other drilling tool enterprises, the surge in tungsten prices has brought double pressure: on the one hand, the production cost has increased significantly, some small and medium-sized drilling tool manufacturers have fallen into cost inversion, resulting in production reduction and order delays; on the other hand, as consumables, drilling tools face fierce market competition, and enterprises are difficult to pass all the cost pressure to the downstream, leading to continuous pressure on gross profit margin.

In the short term, the high-level operation of tungsten prices is difficult to change, and the drilling tool industry will accelerate the reshuffling. Leading enterprises will digest costs through long-term contracts to lock in prices and technological optimization, while small and medium-sized manufacturers will face the risk of elimination. In the long run, as the strategic value of tungsten continues to highlight, drilling tool enterprises can only focus on high-end and lightweight upgrading and improve the utilization rate of tungsten raw materials to gain a firm foothold under the high cost pressure.