Antimony explorers eye near term production as prices show no sign of coming down

Future antimony miners say offtakers are pulling in as much as US$50,000/t as traders scramble to beat Chinese export restrictions.

This little rock has plenty of investors smiling right now. Pic: Getty Images

• Antimony traders are making as much as US$50,000/t as Chinese export controls have customers scrambling

• A number of ASX companies are developing near-term production plans

• Players are lining up to follow last year's breakout explorer Larvotto

Antimony is all the rage right now due to a surging price, and while there aren’t currently any ASX-listed antimony producers, there are a handful companies rapidly progressing towards production.

The antimony price has gone from around US$10,000 per tonne at the end of 2023 to at least US$50,000/t today due to what Blue Ocean Equities describes as a “perfect storm” of factors.

Those factors include declining production, particularly from large Chinese mines, dislocated supply due to sanctions on Russia and Chinese export restrictions, growing demand from the solar and defence sectors, and the depletion of strategic stockpiles.

Blue Ocean senior research analyst Carlos Crowley Vazquez said prices would likely remain high for at least the next 3-4 years.

“That demand-supply balance, we just don't see it closing anytime soon, so what that means is, basically we're expecting a strong price environment over the near future,” he told a webinar last week.

On the same webinar, Ron Heeks, managing director of Larvotto Resources (ASX:LRV), said he was recently having lunch with the company’s antimony offtake partner Wogen, which said it was selling antimony for more than US$50,000/t.

Projects scarce

Australia only has one operating antimony mine, Toronto-listed Mandalay Resources Corp’s Costerfield gold mine in Victoria.

Crowley Vazquez said he wasn’t aware of any material greenfields antimony projects globally.

All of the projects that have emerged are brownfields developments and all are associated with other metals.

“The English word for antimony derives from the Greek word anti, which means opposed, and monos, which means solitude, and that reflects that antimony rarely occurs alone in nature and instead, has a strong affinity to sulphur-bearing minerals or stibnite and it’s formed in association with key metals such as copper, lead and gold,” Equinox Resources (ASX:EQN) managing director Zac Komur said.

Crowley Vazquez said for investors, at current prices, an orebody grading 1% antimony with 90% recoveries and 65% payability equated to a 3.5 gram per tonne gold equivalent orebody.

He said if antimony prices doubled to US$100,000/t, that would equate to a 7g/t AuEq head grade.

“It really transforms what is an important by-product into a very, very attractive project,” he said.

Hillgrove powering ahead

Crowley Vazquez pointed to Larvotto’s Hillgrove project in New South Wales as one of the nearest term producers in the world.

Heeks said the company had been “living the dream” since acquiring Hillgrove 14 months ago.

“We were pretty positive on the upside for gold, and also antimony, but it’s fair to say both have exceeded our expectations,” he said.

The August 2024 prefeasibility study outlined capital costs of $73 million for an operation to produce 80,400 ounces of AuEq over seven years.

At spot prices, Hillgrove has a post-tax net present value of $812 million, an internal rate of return of 242% and a payback of just seven months.

The definitive feasibility study is due this quarter and Heeks said it would look similar to the PFS.

“We’ll supply 7% of the world’s antimony, which is quite exceptional for any single deposit,” he said.

“We’re the nearest term producer in the world and no one else will come on in a few years or arguably longer.

“There really is no better time to be bringing on a gold-antimony project in the history of mining, to be quite honest.”

Others progressing

Blue Ocean covers Larvotto with a buy rating and price target of 89c. The only other antimony hopeful it covers is Southern Cross Gold.

Dual-listed Southern Cross is advancing the Sunday Creek gold-antimony project, 60km from Melbourne.

Sunday Creek has an exploration target of 4.4-5.1 million tonnes at 7.2-9.7g/t AuEq for 1-1.6Moz of AuEq, with an updated target due in July.

Southern Cross managing director Michael Hudson says antimony accounts for about 20% of the deposit.

“Gold is the predominant value, so we just like to say, gold will pay for it, and antimony will help permit it,” he said.

“It's wonderful having a gold project with an antimony or a critical metal by-product. That's very real.”

Blue Ocean also likes Felix Gold (ASX:FXG) and Lode Resources (ASX:LDR) for their near-term production potential.

Felix is advancing multiple projects in Alaska, the Scrafford antimony mine, which operated intermittently between 1915 and 1977 at grades of up to 58% antimony.

Felix has an aggressive fast-track strategy and is aiming to be in production by the end of 2025 via a small-scale 5000t per annum operation.

Meanwhile, Lode holds the Montezuma antimony project in Tasmania, acquired late last year.

Lode is preparing a diamond drilling program and is aiming to be in production by the end of the year via a pilot plant.

The company already has approval to mine 1000t of material.

One not on Blue Ocean’s list but with near-term production potential is Equinox at its Alturas project in British Columbia, Canada.

Alturas is a historical producer with direct shipping ore grades of up to 60%.

The company has a 10,000t bulk sampling program planned.

“At today’s antimony prices, that generates revenue for Equinox to help develop this project, and we're in discussions with offtake agreements regarding that extraction pathway,” Komur said.

“Alturas has the potential to be a low capital cost, direct shipping, high margin antimony development, a rare opportunity in today's market.”

Next in line

Shares in Trigg Minerals (ASX:TMG) have tripled in the past six months following the company’s pivot to antimony.

The company’s Wild Cattle Creek deposit is 80km from Hillgrove and has a resource of 1.52Mt at 1.97% antimony for 29,902t of antimony.

Trigg chief geologist Jonathan King said the resource was open to west and down-dip.

The company is awaiting approvals to drill the deposit.

King said the company had already been approached by potential offtakers, but said the board felt it was a bit early for discussions.

Krakatoa Resources (ASX:KTA) recently acquired the Zopkhito antimony-gold project in Georgia.

CEO Mark Major lamented the company’s low market capitalisation of less than $6 million.

“I think that’s because people don’t really understand what we’ve got,” he said.

Zopkhito has a foreign resource estimate of 225,000t at 11.6% antimony for 26,000t of antimony, as well as 7.1Mt at 3.7g/t gold for 815,119oz of gold.

Major described Zopkhito as “more of a pre-development” asset than an exploration project.

The company is aiming to start drilling shortly and move to a preliminary economic assessment next year.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Trigg Minerals, Equinox Resources and Felix Gold are Stockhead advertisers they did not sponsor this article.

Originally published as Antimony explorers eye near term production as prices show no sign of coming down