The Tungsten Squeeze Has Reached the Companies That Buy It

Issued on behalf of Western Star Resources Inc.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 17, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Energy Metal News News Commentary - There is a line in Kennametal’s fiscal 2026 results that says more about the tungsten market than any price chart. The company, one of the largest industrial consumers of tungsten in the Western world, reported negative operating cash flow of $4 million against positive $208 million a year earlier, and attributed it to higher inventory values from unprecedented tungsten price increases together with advance payments made to certain suppliers to secure raw material supply. A profitable, eighty-five-year-old manufacturer with record adjusted earnings is now paying its suppliers before delivery to make sure the material shows up. That is what a squeeze looks like once it stops being a commodity story and becomes a working capital problem. Companies mentioned in today’s commentary include: Western Star Resources Inc. (CSE: WSR) (OTC: WSRIF) (FRA: 4K2), Kennametal Inc. (NYSE: KMT), ATI Inc. (NYSE: ATI), Howmet Aerospace Inc. (NYSE: HWM), and Carpenter Technology Corporation (NYSE: CRS).

The supply side of this has been covered exhaustively. China mines the overwhelming majority of the world’s tungsten, export licensing has restricted what leaves the country, and the United States has not shipped tungsten from a domestic mine in more than a decade. What gets less attention is that the metal has to end up somewhere, and where it ends up is inside cutting tools, armour-piercing penetrators, jet engine components and the wear parts of heavy industry. Those buyers cannot substitute their way out. Tungsten carbide is used because nothing else has the hardness and the melting point, which is precisely why there is no elegant response to a shortage.

A procurement deadline sharpens it further. From January 1, 2027, the restriction under DFARS 252.225-7052 on tungsten sourced from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea widens from the melt or production stage to the mine or ore stage, and recycled material will no longer reset country of origin. A defense supplier that has been compliant on a melt-stage basis may not be compliant on a mine-stage basis, and finding out which applies requires tracing material back further up the chain than most buyers have ever had to.

Which brings the conversation to the least glamorous activity in the sector: finding out where the tungsten actually is. Not announcing a project, not modelling a resource, but the methodical business of walking ground with a sample bag and working out which few hundred metres are worth putting a drill on. Nobody writes about soil geochemistry. It is, however, the step that decides whether the money spent on drilling produces anything.

A Soil Survey That Found Its Best Result Where Nobody Had Looked

Western Star Resources Inc. (CSE: WSR) (OTC: WSRIF) (FRA: 4K2) announced results from a Phase 2 soil geochemical survey at its Rowland Tungsten Property in Elko County, Nevada. The survey comprised 315 samples collected on lines spaced approximately 100 metres apart with 25 to 50 metre sample spacing, designed to give continuous geochemical coverage across the property. It defined two discrete, spatially coherent tungsten-in-soil anomalies, each expanding the recognised zone around historical workings.

The headline number is sample R079 at 4,240 ppm tungsten, which the Company reports as 0.53% WO3. The detail that matters more is where it came from. It sits 250 metres from the nearest historical working, on ground with no recorded past activity. Historical miners in the Jarbidge district worked what they could see at surface, and a soil survey is one of the few tools that finds what they could not.

"These results show the methodical exploration approach is paying off. We have defined two significant soil anomalies over the historical workings and extended the recognised footprint well beyond them. Northern Zone B is the tighter of the two, a compact cluster elongate to the northeast, sitting within the modelled intrusive. Rowland Main is the larger footprint, and its best sample, 0.53% WO3, lies 250 metres from the nearest historical working on ground with no recorded past activity. That is the part that interests us most: the strongest result came from ground nobody has tested," stated Blake Morgan, Chief Executive Officer and President of Western Star Resources.

The Rowland Main anomaly is the larger of the two, defined by 18 anomalous samples across a footprint of approximately 190 metres east-west by 630 metres north-south and elongate north-northeast. Six samples exceed 100 ppm tungsten, headlined by R079 and supported by R082 at 422 ppm, R119 at 373 ppm, R116 at 215 ppm, R078 at 176 ppm and R120 at 110 ppm. It surrounds the historical Rowland Main workings, from which the Company reported a rock-chip assay of 4.02% WO3 in July 2026.

The Northern Zone B anomaly is tighter, 13 anomalous samples across roughly 190 by 190 metres, peaking at 228 ppm tungsten at R188 and supported by R155, R217, R156 and R218. It is centred on rock-chip samples RO-18-01, RO-18-02 and RO-18-03, which returned 0.35%, 1.22% and 0.54% WO3 respectively in July 2026, and is developed over tactite, calc-silicate hornfels and Prospect Mountain quartzite.

Two Anomalies, Two Different Geophysical Settings

The two zones do not sit in the same geological position, and the Company has been careful to say so. Most of the strongest samples in Northern Zone B lie within the modelled intrusive body resolved at a susceptibility threshold of 0.010 SI by the three-dimensional magnetic inversion completed by East Coast Consulting, with the anomaly centre near an interpreted magnetic-low lineament. The Rowland Main anomaly lies outside that modelled intrusive footprint and is associated instead with an interpreted magnetic-high lineament.

That distinction is the kind of thing that separates a target list from a wish list. Skarn tungsten systems form where an intrusion contacts carbonate rock, so knowing whether an anomaly sits inside the modelled intrusive or along a structure outside it changes what a drill hole should be testing and at what angle. Two anomalies in two settings is a more useful outcome than two anomalies in one, because it tests two hypotheses rather than confirming a single assumption twice.

There is also a mineralogical thread. Sample R079 returned 66.9 ppm tin against a survey median of 2.8 ppm, the highest tin value recorded in the survey. The Company describes that tungsten-tin association as consistent with a greisen-modified skarn system, which is a specific and testable interpretation rather than a general statement of prospectivity.

The analytical method deserves a mention because it is the sort of decision that quietly determines whether a survey is worth anything. Samples were prepared and analysed by ALS Global, screened to minus 180 microns, and analysed by lithium borate fusion with ICP-MS. The Company selected fusion specifically because tungsten is refractory and partial digestions under-report tungsten hosted in scheelite and wolframite. A cheaper digestion would have produced lower numbers and might have missed both anomalies entirely.

Soil geochemical values represent surficial dispersion. They are not indicative of grade and do not indicate a mineral resource, and the Company states as much in its release. Soil results from the nearby White Star Tungsten Project, a further 253 samples, remain at the laboratory. The Rowland results will be integrated with the completed UAV magnetic survey, the three-dimensional magnetic inversion and the July 2026 rock-chip and channel assays to advance drill target generation across the consolidated Jarbidge-Charleston footprint.

Who Is Waiting at the Other End of the Chain

The four companies below are referenced solely as market and sector context. None is a peer, competitor or financial comparable of Western Star Resources, and all four are large, established, revenue-generating manufacturers. They are named because they represent the demand this entire exploration cycle is ultimately aimed at.

Kennametal Inc. (NYSE: KMT)
Kennametal delivers tooling and wear-resistant solutions to customers across aerospace and defense, earthworks, energy, general engineering and transportation, and generated $2.4 billion of revenue in fiscal 2026 with approximately 8,100 employees. Fourth quarter sales were $737 million, up 43% year over year, with operating income of $303 million and record adjusted earnings per share of $2.96. Full-year sales were $2.36 billion, up 20%, and net income attributable to Kennametal rose to $342 million from $93 million.

Chief Executive Sanjay Chowbey attributed the quarter to decisive pricing actions in what he called an unprecedented tungsten environment, alongside volume growth and cost improvement. The cash flow line is the one worth carrying away, and it is quoted at the top of this article. When the buyer of last resort starts prepaying suppliers, the shortage has moved from theory into the balance sheet.

ATI Inc. (NYSE: ATI)
ATI reported second quarter 2026 sales of $1.26 billion, up approximately 11%, with aerospace and defense sales up 13% to $862.0 million, or 68% of total sales. Within its Advanced Alloys and Solutions segment, defense sales rose 90% year over year. Confirmed order backlog reached a record $4.4 billion, up 18%, with roughly 70% expected to be fulfilled within twelve months, and the company raised full-year guidance.

ATI is on this list for a reason beyond scale. Management has described the company as one of only three qualified producers in the Western world capable of manufacturing high-purity hafnium and zirconium to the standards required for aerospace and nuclear applications, and has said that Chinese export limits have made those capabilities more valuable. That is the same dynamic playing out in tungsten, observed from inside a company that already lives with it. Qualification, not capacity, is what makes a Western supplier scarce.

Howmet Aerospace Inc. (NYSE: HWM)
Howmet Aerospace manufactures engineered products for the aerospace and defense sector, including jet engine components, fastening systems and forged wheels, and raised its 2026 revenue outlook alongside second quarter results reported in the summer. Its end markets are commercial aerospace, defense aerospace and commercial transportation.

Its relevance here is the machining intensity of what it makes. Engineered aerospace components are cut from difficult alloys, and cutting them consumes tungsten carbide tooling at a rate that ordinary manufacturing does not. A rising tungsten price does not appear on an aerospace supplier’s income statement as a line item called tungsten. It appears as consumable tooling cost, which is why the squeeze propagates further down the chain than the headlines suggest.

Carpenter Technology Corporation (NYSE: CRS)
Carpenter Technology produces specialty alloys and engineered materials for aerospace, defense, medical, energy and industrial applications, with a business built around materials qualified into customer programmes rather than sold on a spot basis. Its aerospace and defense exposure has been the dominant driver of its results in recent years.

Carpenter illustrates the timescale problem better than any of the others. Materials in aerospace and defense are qualified into specific programmes through processes that take years, and a qualified supplier is not casually replaced. That is an advantage for an incumbent and an obstacle for a new source of supply, and it is the reason a mine-stage sourcing rule taking effect in January 2027 is a genuinely difficult problem rather than a procurement inconvenience. New material has to be found, permitted, mined and then qualified, and only the first of those has started.

What Would Move This Forward

Three things, in order. The White Star soil results, which are at the laboratory and will either extend the picture across the consolidated footprint or narrow it. The integration of soils, magnetics and the July rock-chip and channel assays into a defined drill target list. And then drilling, which is the only activity that converts an anomaly into information about grade and continuity.

None of that is assured. Western Star is an early-stage exploration company with no mineral resource defined at Rowland, White Star, Eagle Point or its British Columbia property, soil anomalies are not mineralization, and most exploration projects never become mines. What has changed is the backdrop against which this work is being done. A metal with no substitute, a supply chain that runs through a country the United States has decided it cannot rely on, a procurement rule with a date attached, and buyers already prepaying to keep material flowing. The companies that can eventually answer that are not yet producing anything. Some of them are still walking the ground with sample bags.

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CONTINUED... Read this and more news for Western Star Resources Inc. (CSE: WSR) (OTC: WSRIF) (FRA: 4K2) at: https://www.westernstarresources.com

Article Sources:
^{[1] Western Star Resources Inc., news release dated September 18, 2026 (Phase 2 soil geochemical survey results, anomaly descriptions, sample table, geophysical relationships, QA/QC, Blake Morgan commentary, Qualified Person).
[2] Kennametal Inc., "Kennametal Reports Fiscal 2026 and Fourth Quarter Results," August 5, 2026.
[3] ATI Inc., second quarter 2026 results and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended June 28, 2026, as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
[4] Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement clause 252.225-7052.
[5] Public disclosures and filings of the referenced companies (Kennametal, ATI, Howmet Aerospace, Carpenter Technology).}

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Cautionary Note Regarding Exploration Results: Western Star Resources Inc. is an early-stage mineral exploration company and has not defined any mineral resource or mineral reserve at the Rowland, White Star, Eagle Point or Western Star properties. Readers are cautioned that mineral exploration is highly speculative and that most exploration projects do not result in a mine. Soil geochemical values reported in this article represent surficial dispersion and are not, and should not be interpreted as, indicative of grade or of any mineral resource, as stated by the Company. WO3 values are calculated from elemental tungsten results using a conversion factor of 1.2611. Soil and rock-chip samples are selective in nature and are not necessarily representative of mineralization across any property. Geochemical anomalies, modelled intrusive bodies, susceptibility thresholds and interpreted magnetic-high and magnetic-low lineaments derived from three-dimensional magnetic inversion are conceptual exploration targets and interpretations only; a geochemical or geophysical anomaly is not evidence of mineralization. Historical workings and historical rock-chip results are not evidence of a mineral resource. Soil geochemistry from the White Star Tungsten Project remains at the laboratory and no results are available; there is no assurance those results will be positive or consistent with the Rowland results. Statements regarding drill target generation, future work programmes and the integration of geochemical and geophysical datasets are forward-looking and may not occur as described. The scientific and technical information in the Company’s release has been reviewed and approved by Jasper Mowatt, a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Mowatt is a consultant to the Company and is therefore NOT independent of Western Star Resources Inc. Please refer to the Company’s filings on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca for the assumptions and risk factors associated with its disclosure. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the Company’s releases.

Cautionary Note Regarding Market and Policy Data: References to Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement clause 252.225-7052 and its January 1, 2027 changes, and to Chinese export licensing arrangements, describe matters of public policy that may be amended, delayed, extended or repealed, and no assurance is given that any company will benefit from them. Commodity prices are volatile and past performance does not guarantee future results.

References to Kennametal Inc., ATI Inc., Howmet Aerospace Inc. and Carpenter Technology Corporation are provided solely as market and sector context. None of them is a peer, competitor, or financial comparable of Western Star Resources Inc. They are large, established, revenue-generating manufacturers operating in entirely different segments of the value chain, and their sales, earnings, margins, backlogs, guidance, cash flows and share performance are not indicative of Western Star Resources Inc.’s prospects. Western Star Resources Inc. is a pre-revenue exploration company with no defined mineral resource. No partnership, affiliation, sponsorship, supply relationship, offtake arrangement or endorsement exists or is implied between Western Star Resources Inc. and any company named, and none of the companies named has any involvement in Western Star Resources Inc., this article, or its distribution. Financial and operating figures attributed to those companies are as disclosed by them in their own releases and filings and have not been independently verified by the publisher.

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