Let's talk about Tungsten prices
You may have heard about the rising price of tungsten this year, and certainly you will have seen the rising prices of some darts. Rather than hearsay on social media let me try and break down the situation and give you some facts. I'll also show you the real world impact it has on the costs of making darts.
The Chinese monopoly on tungsten:
Whilst tungsten can be mined in many countries around the world the cheaper labour costs in China along with cheaper energy (as an example China has 1,200 active coal power plants) makes them by far the global leader. Russia would be a big competitor however due to sanctions their tungsten remains unavailable. Production in Europe and the USA is relatively negligible and the quotes for billets I've received were ridiculously high. As such China is holding all the aces and I'll be using their tungsten price as reference.
Here is an article from earlier this year explaining some of the price hikes. Note the 12 year high in price was quoted in May. Since May the price has exploded.
https://www.mining.com/tungsten-prices-hit-12-year-high-as-china-tightens-export-controls/
Price tracking:
I use www.metal.com to keep track of the tungsten market as a whole. It's been making for depressing reading during the second half of this year.
As of today (5th of November 2025) the average price listed for the "#1 Tungsten Bar USD/kg" is 90.98
Let's compare that to some prices I can recover using the Way Back Machine (archive.org):
8th February 2025 = 44.82
14th June 2025 = 51.93
5th November 2025 = 90.98
These prices are basic prices so do not reflect the price of a dart barrel ready billet but you can see a price rise of 16% between February and June and the price more than doubling between February and today (103%).
What is the impact on Loxley's production costs?
Not every dart is created equally and not every dart factory is created equally either. The main things that affect the percentage rise in costs:
A dart factory in China can order billets specifically for a particular dart to maximise efficiency (reduce machining time and reduce wastage). A dart factory outside China (the UK, New Zealand, Japan) will often order standard billets from China. Standard widths for example are 6.35mm, 6.75mm, 7.15mm, 8mm.
The more machining on a dart, coating(s), complex grips, the less percentage impact there will be on the cost. The billet cost will have increased the same amount on a 54mm by 6.4mm simple straight dart as it will on a 54mm by 6.4mm tapered dart with coating, lateral cuts and re-machining.
Taking some quotes I've had from 2024 and comparing them to new quotes for re-orders in September 2025 the following percentage increases have been quoted:
17.6%, 26%, 37%, 41.5%, 43.2%
Given that there's been over 10% increase in tungsten price since September the quotes today would probably be even worse.
These price hikes are on "barrels only" production quotes I should note. Packaging, flights, stems and shipping have remained stable.
What about real money impact?
I'll give you one real money example. The production cost of one particular set of darts has gone up by €2.61
The direct impact this should have on RRP if we only look at the euro cost rather than the percentage (ie if we keep the same gross margin in Euros and therefore a lower gross margin by percentage) is €5.44. This is because of tax and the margins we give to shops.
What is Loxley doing then?
We have to make some tough calls. We don't get the same production costs as the big brands, simple economics dictates they get better prices with bigger scale. We also give shops better margins. So the impact is high. A handful of products have therefore had a €3 to €5 increase in RRP - not quite enough to offset costs but we want to remain great value for money and we want to keep giving the shops the best margins.
Some darts however we can't justify the price increases. A 37-43 percent increase in cost is currently too much to swallow so we'll be discontinuing some darts we just don't feel we can keep in the range if they are no longer value for money.
Other than that we'll be working even harder to look at every possible darts factory and looking all over the world in case there's tungsten we can source at better rates. There's a few other possibilities we are looking at too which we'll be entering into in due course if we can.
The prognosis moving forward:
Back in September I heard the price of tungsten was expected to come down. In October I was informed the price had flatlined and was expected to remain at the then current level. So seeing the sharp increase since these two expectations were made means I have no idea at all what to expect. In the world of the 2020s only a fool would try to make any predictions.
Things I didn't mention:
Everyone knows inflation all over the world is way higher than what is being reported. Everyone is fed up. So I decided to not talk about wars, real estate, energy prices, sanctions, tariffs, taxes, corruption, market manipulation, greed, etc. Of course there's so many things affecting the darts industry but these are things affecting every part of our daily life so I don't think I need to rant about them!
