Strategic Minerals funded to drive Redmoor tungsten project through pre-feasibility

Strategic Minerals PLC (AIM:SML) will spend the rest of 2026 and much of 2027 drilling and testing its Redmoor project in Cornwall, with the aim of upgrading its resource to a higher-confidence category. The company said it is fully funded for the next 12 months and substantially funded through a pre-feasibility study, the detailed engineering and economic assessment that precedes a final investment decision. Market conditions are helping. The six-month average price for ammonium paratungstate (APT), the benchmark traded form of tungsten, stands at US$2,960 per tonne unit, well above the US$1,800 used in the company's most optimistic scenario. Tungsten, a hard metal used in defence and high-technology applications, is in short supply as China restricts exports. Redmoor's inferred resource rose 49% in March to 17.4 million tonnes grading 0.65% tungsten oxide equivalent. The company describes it as Europe's highest-grade undeveloped tungsten project. The larger resource more than doubles the potential mine life to 29 years from 12. A preliminary economic analysis gives a base-case after-tax net present value of $1.54 billion and an internal rate of return of 40%, against upfront capital costs of $109.7 million. Those numbers rest entirely on inferred resources, so they come with the usual heavy caveats. Metallurgical testwork lifted expected tungsten recovery to 85.8% from 72.0% and showed silver can be recovered into the copper concentrate. Cornwall Council granted planning permission in Jul...