Antimony Market Trends

Growth Drivers

• Rising U.S. military demand has led to decoupling efforts from foreign reliance on raw materials: The U.S. military equipment sales increased at an unprecedented rate of 16% in 2023, amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and reached USD 238 billion. With antimony being crucial for defense equipment manufacturing, the U.S. stockpiles antimony up to only 1,100 compared to the 2023 consumption of 23,000, as per the 2024 Center for Strategic & International Studies report. The United States has not mined antimony ever since the 2001 cessation of the Sunshine Mine in Idaho. The U.S. meets 18% of its demand via lead-acid battery recycling, and imports the rest from China (63%), Belgium (8%), India (6%), and Bolivia (4%).
  Perpetua Resources announced plans to revisit the Stibnite Gold Mine operations to once again domestically manufacture antimony-trisulfide, specifically for munitions and missile applications. The project was awarded with USD 24.8 million in December 2022 by the U.S. Department of Defense under its Defense Production Act Investments Program and USD 1.b billion in loans by the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Post China’s announcements on export restrictions, Perpetua share prices jumped 19% — surpassing a three-year high benchmark. After China (40kt), Tajikistan (21 kt), Turkey (6 kt), and Burma (4.6 kt) were the top antimony producers in 2023. Tajikistan, as the second-largest Sb maker, in February 2024 held a dialogue with the Department of State regarding C5+1 critical minerals for convening Central Asia’s five nations, to discuss shared goals of building a strong collaborative relationship for the trade of critical minerals. The Tajik government was onboarded, and U.S. investor Comsup Commodities funded more than USD 300 million in establishing antimony processing facilities in Tajikistan. This is estimated to boost the Sb offtake from Tajikistan and aid the U.S. antimony market growth.
• High lead production to meet end use requirements, in turn indicating strong economic tailwinds: Lead has faced incremental demand from the battery manufacturing sector, with the cell production capacity expanded by 30% in 2024, reaching 1 TWh annual capability, while the U.S. EV battery demand registered a CAGR of 20% in 2024, finds IEA.  In the U.S., lead was domestically produced by five Missouri lead mines, as a byproduct at two Alaskan zinc mines, and by two Idaho-based silver mines. The value of recoverable lead mined was USD 670 million in 2024, compared with USD 660 million in 2023. Furthermore, the sector is a direct economic contributor to the U.S. GDP and employment. The U.S. lead battery market in 2021 created 37,490 direct jobs, labor income of USD 3 billion; GDP of USD 4 billion, and total outcome of USD 14.5 billion; 37,400 supplier jobs, labor income of USD 2.8 billion, GDP contribution of USD 4.8 billion, and output of USD 10.1 billion; 45,720 induced impact jobs, USD 2.7 billion labor income, USD 4.7 in GDP, USD 8.4 billion in outputs.

Challenges

• The high bio deposition of antimony leading to environmental concerns: China, Bolivia, and Russa hold 80% of total production. The area near the world’s largest Sb-mining site in Hunan Province, China, has antimony concentrations in mining soils ranging from 101 to 5,045 mg kg−1 and from 17 to 288 μg L−1 in water, as mentioned in a January 2022 ScienceDirect report. Similarly, in Spain’s Extremadura province’s abandoned Sb-mining regions have a concentration between 225 and 2,449 mg kg⁻¹. Moreover, in the U.S., roughly 1,900 tons are released from about 9,000 public shooting and 3,000 military shooting ranges. A high soil or sediment concentration of antimony is rendered potentially toxic to ecosystems and adversely affects human health via chemical accumulation in the food chains. Antimony and its derivatives interact with sulfhydryls in human bodies, thereby causing cellular hypoxia and cellular ionic imbalance. The metabolic impairment of the human nervous system and environmental concerns are the major market roadblocks.