Fajasy on X
Elmet $ELMT won a ~$36M U.S. defense stockpile contract for metal its plants already make, while deliveries under its $2B stockpile contract wait on new supply. On September 30, Elmet announced the award from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which manages the U.S. National Defense Stockpile. It covers TZM (titanium-zirconium-molybdenum alloy) billets, bar stock, and ingots, plus molybdenum and tungsten wire, materials used to make jet engine components. Elmet's $2B stockpile contract, announced September 14, is separate and covers tungsten concentrate, the upgraded ore a mine ships. The $36M is 27.4% of Elmet's $131.5M total backlog at July 3 ($36M / $131.5M), and the release doesn't say when deliveries start or how long the contract runs. On the slide for the $2B contract, Elmet's October 1 deck says Elmet "does not intend to begin delivering material into the National Defense Stockpile until sufficient incremental new supply is available." Elmet's supply agreement with Tungsten West (AIM: TUN) puts concentrate from Hemerdon, its tungsten mine in Devon, England, first in line for Elmet's DLA deliveries until Elmet's Nevada refinery is commissioned (targeted for 1H 2029). Elmet expects >1,000 tonnes a year of Hemerdon concentrate, and the mine targets full production by the end of Q1 2027. In September I treated $1.85B of the $2B ceiling as an upper bound, not orders Elmet has in hand, and the $36M sits outside the $2B entirely. So the stockpile's newest award goes to metal from Elmet's existing U.S. plants, while the $2B contract still waits on a mine in England that isn't at full production yet.
