CME Group announced on Monday that it will launch tungsten futures, with trading to start by early in the first quarter of 2027, pending regulatory review. The contract will be listed on COMEX and financially settled against the Fastmarkets assessment for tungsten APT, ammonium paratungstate, duty unpaid on a CIF Rotterdam and Baltimore basis.
Tungsten has an active spot market but has never had a futures market. Global production runs between 85,000 and 95,000 tonnes a year, a market CME values at more than 20 billion dollars at current spot prices. The metal is designated a critical mineral by the United States, the European Union, Japan and India, and is used across advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, aerospace and defence.
“Tungsten sits at the intersection of advanced manufacturing, semiconductor technologies and geopolitics, and our clients are increasingly seeking to hedge their exposure and improve price transparency,” said Jin Hennig, CME Group’s global head of metals. TechMet SCM chief executive Quentin Lamarche called the contract an important tool for the physical trade, and Grondmet managing director Maarten Gassmann said manufacturers have had no forward market against which to budget.
The launch extends CME’s critical minerals suite in a year when its metals complex has set volume records. For mining finance, the significance is practical: without a forward price, a tungsten developer cannot hedge future output and lenders have no market curve against which to underwrite a loan. A listed contract does not by itself create liquidity, and early trading will show whether producers and consumers use it, but it removes a structural gap that has separated tungsten from the exchange traded base metals.