Four decades of failed restarts meet a valuation built on fantasy tungsten prices, just as cheaper competing supply comes online.
August 27, 2026 – Blue Moon continues to champion Springer as its saving grace. But its valuation, restart timeline, and “strategic US supply” status crumbles under the slightest scrutiny; built on a price with no basis in forecast, against a field of better-funded, better-resourced, and faster-moving competitors.
The tungsten price Scotia relies on will trigger new competition: S&P's $360–480/mtu structural cost estimate is the level at which over 85% of ex-China tungsten projects become profitable to build. Springer needs roughly $1,100/mtu just to break even - nearly three times higher than the price its rivals’ studies assume.
The race has already begun. South Korea's Sangdong and the UK's Hemerdon mines both began production in July 2026. S&P has identified another 11 ex-China projects that could add nearly 20 kt of new capacity by 2030, with a further ~20 kt stalled only on financing or permitting.
Springer’s Q4 2027 start date coincides directly with this window, meaning Blue Moon is investing at the top of the price cycle and asking shareholders to wait for a return until after its rivals have already undercut the price.
Springer's history contradicts the “brownfield advantage” story. Since the late 1900s, Springer has sat mostly idle, shuttered, or being prepared for a short-lived restart, some of which never came to fruition.
Every study ever done on Springer contradicts its current valuation. Its only published economic study, the 2012 PEA, used $400/mtu and produced just $22.8m of NPV. Applying that same price to Scotia's own model produces a negative $267m NPV. Even Scotia's own long-term price assumption turns the valuation negative if applied from inception.
Scotia's $348.7m Springer valuation (39% of Blue Moon's total NAV) rests on a tungsten price of $2,200/mtu held for seven straight years. This is a figure the model doesn't source, and no comparable project has ever used it. No peer study (Sangdong, Hemerdon, Mt Carbine, Sisson, or Springer's own 2012 PEA) has ever been priced above $450/mtu.
In an inflated climate, almost any tungsten mine can be transformed from a turd into a lump of gold. The problem starts when rival mines built on that same price signal actually turn up. Springer has spent four decades proving that a restart story is not the same thing as a durable mine.
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