Tungsten is ranked by australia, British Geological Surveys, US Department of Defence and the European Commission as a 'critical' mineral due to its economic importance, supply risk and inability to be substituted. However, the vast majority of tungsten mining and processing occurs in China. australia ranks second for world economic resources of tungsten although current production is modest with only WO3 concentrate being sold from two operating mines (Hughes, 2020). as the Chinese government has implemented export controls on ammonium paratungstate (aPT [(NH4)no(H2W12O42)-4H2O or 5(NH4)2O.12WO3.5H2O]), tungsten oxide and high-purity tungsten alloys from 4 February 2025, a substantial opportunity exists for downstream hydrometallurgical processing of tungsten in australia by converting scheelite and/or wolframite ores to aPT. In the present work, the current technologies and existing problems of tungsten hydrometallurgy have been summarised and compared. To overcome drawbacks of current processes, a new process for aPT production from caustic leach solutions of scheelite and/or wolframite based on direct solvent extraction (DSX) is presented in Figure 1. The principle, flow sheet and characteristics are introduced in detail. The results indicated that the new technology had wide applicability to the treatment of alkaline leach solutions arising from different tungsten ores generated via either autoclave soda leaching or caustic soda leaching. after leaching, tungsten was selectively extracted from P/as/Si impurities in the DSX process without pH adjustment or dilution of caustic leach solution to make the sodium tungstate-rich solution (Na2WO4) readily transform to ammonium tungstate solution ((NHa)2WO4). The raffinate solution can be returned to the leaching step directly (for scheelite leaching) or after conversion to a caustic soda-rich solution with lime (for wolframite leaching), realising the recycling of alkali and water. Compared to traditional processes, the new process exhibits significant advantages of high recovery of WOs (>98.5 per cent), low release of wastewater and low consumption of chemicals resulting in an estimated 40 per cent decrease in operational cost.