The United States has found itself caught in a full-blown antimony crisis. While it appears as though it’ll get a lot worse before it gets better, their dependence on China for a raft of critical minerals has become too much of a strategic vulnerability – and Trump’s signature executive orders are gearing up to throw money at the situation until the problem goes away.
The US consumed 24kt of antimony in 2024, 85% of which had to be imported due to no domestic production, with the remaining 3.5kt coming from recycling lead-acid batteries. There are massive swathes of demand for antimony coming from the defence sector, and they are physically struggling to buy it.
The commodity’s demand profile is a rapidly expanding landscape, with antimony appearing in over a thousand US electrical application patents. Any widespread uptake by an industry can radically increase demand, as was seen with solar panels growing from nothing in 2021 to half the market in 2023 – critically threatening supply to defence.
Of its vast array of military applications, which span from small arms munitions to night vision goggles and heat-seeking missile guidance systems – a prime example would be the 45kg, 155mm artillery shell.
Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the US was producing 14,400 of them a month, which was rapidly depleting their stockpiles in the process. Ukraine has been firing around 3 million a year, almost entirely coming from US and NATO reserves that urgently need to be replenished. Russia has been firing a whopping 11 million a year, so it’s unlikely any of their own or Tajikistan’s antimony is up for grabs.
In June 2024, the US set a target of boosting 155mm shell production to 100,000 a month by the end of 2025, through a US$5 billion investment in manufacturing capacity – but have so far only managed to increase it to 50,000.
In November, the US Army stated they will be able to make 70-80,000 per month by early 2025. They’ve been making the investments needed in the infrastructure, but are still being held up by the raw materials.
Asking where the antimony will come from seems like a scarily rhetorical question at the moment. United States Antimony Corp (UAMY), which operates the only antimony smelter in the US and is capable of producing 2,270t of the metal annually. It was still operating at just 50% capacity at the end of 2024, due to the same problem that has always been a thorn in their side – a lack of feedstock.
The company could boost annual nameplate capacity to 3,840t without any major upgrades, but plans to work with the DoD to finance a quadrupling of this capacity to 15,360t. Despite interacting with over 50 concentrate producers spanning 16 countries, UAMY still hasn’t locked in any meaningful supply.
UAMY has also started importing a tiny amount of concentrate from Australia to their intermittently operational Mexican antimony smelter (again, regularly decommissioned due to lack of feedstock).
The company is so fed up with large deposits like Perpetua’s Stibnite being delayed for years, they have begun acquiring small historical antimony mines that can rapidly be brought into production within months.
It is these types of projects that industry veterans believe will solve the antimony crisis, which is visualised below in the catastrophic divergence in outside China prices.
It’s clear that the clash of rising demand meeting a lack of supply was converging well before any of China’s export controls were introduced, and it’s now an extremely exposed pain point that is being pressed.
An urgent executive order was signed into action last week, mandating a special investigation into the risks posed by the US’ dependence on the import of critical minerals to both their national security and the economic welfare of domestic industries.
There are 17 critical minerals that the US is majority import reliant on. In just 90 days, the inquiry will profile the entire country’s demand for each mineral and its derivatives, where they are currently being sourced from and what risks are associated with each country, as well as the current supply chains and dollar value of imports. It will also analyse the United States current and potential capabilities to mine and refine them domestically.
In 180 days, there will be a final report with recommendations handed to the President that will likely be promptly actioned, so that Western Nations can remove the risk of being starved of the critical minerals so many of their industries depend on.
Source: Bloomberg – 155mm shells on the production floor of the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant
Antimony is a crucial hardening agent in lead-alloys used in arms manufacturing. It prevents deformation of projectiles during firing, improves penetration capabilities, and enhances the fragmentation characteristics of shrapnel.
The China Problem
The reason that the procurement of antimony is so vital to America’s national security, is also a driving force behind China’s attempts to inhibit their access to it – they do not want the US manufacturing arms for either replenishment purposes or to increase war reserves.
The Global Times, which is ultimately a propaganda agency for the Chinese Communist Party, narrated the ban with official commentary that announced it as necessary to safeguard their own national security, as well as fulfill international non-proliferation obligations.
War games conducted by both Chinese and Western forces have consistently been increasing in scale and frequency in areas around Taiwan in recent years, including China’s simulation of a full-scale attack on the island late last year.
The US is bound by law to provide Taiwan with defensive weapons in the event of an attack, and Joe Biden stated America would defend Taiwan militarily if China were to invade. But for all the soldiers, high-tech gadgets, fighter jets and warships that the US has amassed over the years, they’ve neglected what would likely be the most important asset of a war of this kind – munitions.
The Center for Strategic & International Studies ran 24 intricately detailed simulations on what a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan would look like in 2026, and determined that a major regional conflict of this kind would exceed current stockpiles of the US DoD – with many key types of ammunition running out after just one week.
Obviously no one wishes for this to ever occur, and the US having ample war reserves would go a long way towards detering China from attempting to take a country that it literally claims is part of its territory. The US needs to boost ammunition manufacturing now, and a whole lot of antimony is required to do it.
While the recent controls are by far the most official and extreme ban on antimony exports that China has ever announced, they have a history of prioritising domestic demand and standard supply chains over international demand – which at times have been serviced by smuggling routes.
In 2018, Chinese customs officials launched a smuggling crackdown operation that seized a sizeable 3,000t of antimony that was destined to journey through the illegal China-Vietnam border – and likely on to Western buyers.
These smuggling routes are reportedly closed, and official data only shows one 20t shipment leaving China since the bans, to an unnamed buyer in Japan.
Regardless of the amount, monitoring of any attempts to contravene the measures have been rigorous. In mid-March, Hong Kong customs seized 25t of antimony ingot right near the border with mainland China.
As China continues their methods of acting as a boa constrictor to the entire critical minerals industry, rapid and significant collaboration between the private and public sectors of Western nations is absolutely essential to relieve some of the pressure that is choking the life out of America’s military might.
TMG Perfectly Positioned
The Trigg Minerals team have understood the fundamentals that are driving this powerful antimony thematic for a very long time, and were strategically able to position themselves right at the turning point for the industry – when antimony was still US$25k/t.
Right after the September export controls were announced, and for just $450,000 plus a 1% NSR, TMG acquired their flagship Wild Cattle Creek project that now hosts over $3 billion of contained antimony. As they gear up to launch an aggressive drilling campaign that will target a whole array of high priority targets, the results couldn’t be coming at a more exciting time.
Trigg Minerals (ASX: TMG) Australian Achilles project has 29,902t of antimony that begins from surface, could produce a concentrate at an AISC as low as US$11,728/t, and be shipped to UAMY to be processed and sold at current prices – as high as US$62,000/t.
TMG brought Andre Booyzen onto the board to bolster their antimony strategy. Andre led Mandalay Resources’ Costerfield mine in Victoria for over 7 years. Costerfield is currently Australia’s only operating antimony mine.
Trigg also appears to have ample appetite for attractive M&A deals, with their recent NSW acquisition of an extraordinarily high grade tenement package that has a litany of historical gold and antimony production occurrences totalling 174koz, including 15koz mined at 53.8g/t Au and rock chips grading a whopping 61% Sb.
The coming months are set to test quite a few exciting exploration plans that have large historical data sets of significant geological value, which we look forward to delving into in our continued coverage of TMG.
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