The antimony market was descending into a state of structural deficit long before China’s export bans towards the end of last year sent the price up over 500% to smash through US$62,000/t in Rotterdam.
178kt of global production in 2011 declined to 106kt in 2023 – but around 87% of the mining market was still controlled by China, Russia and Tajikistan.
Supply constraints have seen historically elevated price levels since 2021 – prior to the Ukraine and Palestine wars, as well solar panel demand – but only to around the US$11,000/t-US$13,000/t mark.
Panic had clearly set in by early 2024, especially within China. In May, there were reports of Chinese smelter’s operating at just 25% capacity because they were unable to source feedstock.
This isn’t surprising given China accounted for 150kt (84%) of 2011’s antimony market, which had been cut down to one third the size at 62kt (58.5%) in 2023 – after more than a decade of depleting reserves, declining grades and mine closures.
What’s worse is the onslaught of new demand that has built up within China, to the point where it could be satisfying all of their domestic production.
Groundbreaking research on antimony’s added efficiencies to photovoltaics released in early 2021 saw rapid uptake by the solar panel industry, which managed to consume 16kt that year. By 2023, it became the largest use of antimony, accounting for 50kt of consumption.
$32 billion financial services giant China Merchant Securities is forecasting 68kt of demand from the photovoltaic sector in 2026 – which China all but dominates.
This demand is in addition to all of the factors that were already pushing the antimony market into a deficit, including arms manufacturing (amongst a host of military applications), semiconductors, flame retardants and lead-acid batteries.
Further complicating matters, The European Union recently announced a monumental €800 billion plan to urgently boost the military capabilities of the entire continent – by almost doubling defence expenditure as a percentage of GDP.
This was revealed right before NATO announced plans to have Europe and Canada to increase their stocks of weaponry and equipment by 30%.
Concerningly, there have been no exports of antimony to the European Union from China since October – hence why the price for antimony in Rotterdam is more than double what it is on the Shanghai Metals Market.
It’s estimated that replenishing the antimony expended in Ukraine alone requires 13kt of the critical metal, but this isn’t the only war to be worried about. The amount of conflicts around the world that are classed as wars have doubled from around 30 in 2012 to more than 60 in 2024.
The 6.8% increase in 2023 shown below was the steepest y-o-y rise since 2009, and pushed global military expenditure to the highest level the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has ever recorded – and this is before the big push of global rearmament:
Source: SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, Apr. 2024.
(The absence of data for the Soviet Union in 1991 means that no total can be
calculated for that year)
Estimates rolling in now are pointing towards a mammoth 20% increase in global military expenditure in 2025, which will likely take the total figure above US$3 trillion.
We’ll dive deeper into the supply and demand dynamics of antimony in our upcoming industry review, but it’s clear that additional supply is urgently needed – and Australia is the perfect staging ground for a bustling antimony industry.
Our pick Trigg Minerals (ASX: TMG) has a JORC resource of 1.52Mt @ 1.97% Sb at their Wild Cattle Creek deposit. It contains 29,902t of antimony which is now worth $3 billion at the latest price of US$62,000/t and 1.62 USD/AUD exchange rate.
This means that there is currently almost $2,000 worth of antimony in each ton of ore at Wild Cattle Creek – a deposit that begins from surface, and has historically produced at grades up to 46%.
The team at East Coast research forecast TMG producing at an AISC as low as $19,000/t (US$11,728/t), leaving a massive margin waiting to be capitalised on – in a tight market desperate for antimony.
China becomes a Blackout Zone
The USGS expects China to have continued its decline to 60kt of production in 2024, and the entire world to have barely scraped 100kt.
The initial export controls that were announced in August and came into effect in September last year, which still technically allowed antimony products to be sent to other nations with a special licence, ground all exports to a halt almost immediately.
Chinese shipments of all antimony products in October dropped 97% from September levels – and have completely flatlined since.
Only one 20T shipment has left China since then (that any official data has recorded), to an unnamed buyer in Japan. There has also been rigorous monitoring of any attempts to contravene the measures. In mid-March, Hong Kong customs seized 25 tons of antimony ingot right near the border with mainland China.
This level of severity has surpassed the extremes seen in previous rounds of export controls, where shipments were typically allowed to resume after at most a few months, as China began to grant special licenses.
The West Scrambles for Supply
The US doesn’t mine any antimony, and keeps a stockpile of just 1,100t – against annual consumption of 24,000t in 2024. Amongst all the madness and wide reaching nature of the recent market rocking tariffs – the US made antimony exempt from these measures.
Their attempts to revive domestic production have so far involved spending 8 years and US$60 million on feasibility studies and permitting processes (which still aren’t complete) for Perpetua’s Stibnite Gold Project – that has been in production many times for over a century.
The US government has deemed the project eligible to apply for a whopping US$1.8 billion loan, despite only being able to produce antimony as a byproduct that could potentially supply 35% of US demand for six years. It’ll take a year to potentially approve, followed by a typical length of construction and ramp up time for a project of this size.
This newfound sense of urgency from America, brought on by a literal and immediate inability to acquire the commodity, will likely have to be met from alternative sources. Ideally, it would come from deposits in friendly nations with timely potential for production and a focus on antimony – such as TMG’s Achilles Project.
It’s the projects that are located in a tier one jurisdiction, with a wealth of historical data, realistic prospects for near-term production and serious exploration upside that are really worth looking closely at.
Wild Cattle Creek’s 29.9kt resource is composed of 120 drill holes totalling 9,538.6 metres, and Trigg’s geophysics plan that will lead into an aggressive drilling campaign has the company poised to have a real chance at achieving their 100kt resource target.
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