{
  "commodity": "Antimony",
  "slug": "antimony",
  "url": "https://xin.bz/commodities/antimony/",
  "title": "Antimony Is the Flame Retardant and Ammunition Metal That One Country Refines — and Licenses on Its Own Terms",
  "description": "Antimony deep dive — 110,000 t of world mine supply with China, Russia, and Tajikistan at 85.5%, Chinese smelters holding above 85% of refining capacity, dual-use export licensing, and metal at $51,800/t.",
  "published": "2026-09-21",
  "updated": "2026-09-21",
  "section": "Global Commodity Insight",
  "series": null,
  "category": null,
  "author": "Xin.bz Global Commodity Insight",
  "period": "2026",
  "tags": [
    "antimony",
    "antimony trioxide",
    "stibnite",
    "flame retardants",
    "critical minerals",
    "export controls",
    "dual-use",
    "China",
    "Russia",
    "Tajikistan",
    "Bolivia",
    "Myanmar",
    "Perpetua Resources",
    "Idaho",
    "Montana",
    "lead-acid batteries",
    "defense industrial base",
    "smelting"
  ],
  "keyPoints": [
    "Antimony is the metal behind flame retardants, ammunition, and lead-acid battery alloys, and roughly half of world consumption goes into keeping plastics from burning.",
    "World mine production runs 110,000 tonnes a year, smaller than a single day of world copper output, which makes every disruption arithmetically large.",
    "China produced 40,000 t in 2025, Russia 32,000 t, and Tajikistan 22,000 t. Those three hold 85.5% of mine supply.",
    "Chinese smelters hold above 85% of world refining capacity and produce more than 80% of refined antimony, so concentrate from Bolivia, Myanmar, and Tajikistan is finished in China regardless of where it was mined.",
    "China placed antimony on its dual-use export control list in August 2024 and banned exports to the United States in December 2024. The ban is suspended until November 27, 2026, with licences still required.",
    "Metal ran from $21,600/t in August 2024 to $60,600/t in June 2025, and traded at $51,800/t on September 18, 2026, down 40% year over year.",
    "The United States is rebuilding domestic supply: an Idaho mine broke ground in October 2025 against $80 million of Department of War funding, and Montana's Stibnite Hill Mine started in November 2025.",
    "The structural position is a small market whose mine supply sits in three countries and whose refining sits in one, under a licence regime that country administers."
  ],
  "bodyFormat": "markdown",
  "body": "*Commodity Deep Dive — part of the Xin.bz Global Commodity Insight series. Browse all: [Commodities](/commodities/).*\n\n## Commodity classification\n\n| Classification | Antimony |\n|---|---|\n| **Rare Earth Element** | **No** |\n| **Strategic Resource** | **Critical — Extreme Supply Risk** — three countries hold 85.5% of mine supply and one holds the refining. |\n| **Agricultural Industry** | **None** |\n| **Manufacturing Industry** | **Primary** — flame retardants, PET catalysts, and glass clarifiers. |\n| **Communications Industry** | **Material** — flame-retarded cabling, enclosures, and semiconductor dopants. |\n| **Defense Industry** | **Primary** — primers, tracer rounds, armour-piercing cores, and night vision. |\n| **Space Industry** | **Limited** — infrared optics and specialty semiconductors. |\n| **Hazardous Transport** | **Moderate** — antimony trioxide ships under dust and exposure controls. |\n| **Rail Transport** | **Material** — concentrate movement from Central Asian and Chinese mines. |\n| **Sea Transport** | **Primary** — concentrate and refined metal in containers. |\n| **Land / Road Transport** | **Material** — mine-to-smelter haulage in Bolivia, Myanmar, and Tajikistan. |\n| **Air Transport** | **Limited** — high-purity and semiconductor grades. |\n| **Market Volatility** | **Extreme** — the price gained 247% in 2024 and fell 40% in the year to September 2026. |\n| **Demand Seasonality** | **Low** — flame-retardant and battery demand runs at a steady rate. |\n| **Supply Seasonality** | **Low** — underground mines run year-round. |\n| **Top Producer** | **China** — 40,000 t in 2025, 36.4% of world mine production. |\n| **Top Consumer** | **China** — the largest flame-retardant and battery manufacturing base. |\n| **Key Port / Chokepoint** | **Chinese smelting and export licensing** — above 85% of refining capacity, released under a dual-use licence. |\n\n**Classification scale:** Sector relevance = Primary / Material / Limited /\nNone. Risk = Low / Moderate / High. A **Key Port / Chokepoint** designation\nmeans a prolonged disruption would materially affect international supply.\n\n## What is it?\n\nAntimony (Sb, atomic number 51) is a brittle, silvery metalloid. Its\ncommercial value rests on one behaviour: antimony compounds work with halogens\nto interrupt combustion in the gas phase, which stops a burning plastic from\nsustaining its own flame.\n\nIt trades in three principal forms:\n\n- **Concentrate**, from stibnite ore (antimony trisulfide), typically 50% to\n  60% antimony.\n- **Metal ingot**, at 99.65% minimum purity, the form quoted on the Rotterdam\n  and Chinese markets.\n- **Antimony trioxide (Sb₂O₃)**, the white powder that carries the\n  flame-retardant trade and the largest share of consumption by volume.\n\nAntimony also hardens lead: a few percent in a battery grid raises strength\nand casting quality, which puts the metal inside most vehicles on the road.\n\n## How is it made?\n\n**stibnite ore → flotation → concentrate → roasting or smelting → crude oxide or metal → refining → trioxide or 99.65% ingot**\n\nStibnite melts at 550°C, low enough that heat alone separates antimony sulfide\nfrom gangue, a simplicity that put the metal in use from antiquity onward. Modern\npractice roasts to crude oxide or smelts to metal, then refines.\n\nThe step that decides the market sits downstream of the mine. Chinese smelters\nhold above 85% of world refining capacity and produce more than 80% of refined\nantimony. Concentrate from Bolivia, Myanmar, Tajikistan and Central Asia is\nfinished in China, regardless of where the ore came out of the ground.\n\n## Where is it produced?\n\nUSGS places 2025 world mine production at **110,000 tonnes**, down from\n119,000 t in 2024.\n\n| Producer | 2025 mine production | World share |\n|---|---:|---:|\n| China | 40,000 t | 36.4% |\n| Russia | 32,000 t | 29.1% |\n| Tajikistan | 22,000 t | 20.0% |\n| Bolivia | 5,000 t | 4.5% |\n| Myanmar | 4,500 t | 4.1% |\n| Turkey | 3,000 t | 2.7% |\n| Other producers | 3,500 t | 3.2% |\n\nThree countries hold 85.5% of supply. Scale is the other half of the story.\nThe world mines 110,000 tonnes of antimony a year, less than a single day of\nworld copper mine output, so a disruption that would be rounding error in a\nbase metal moves this market by tens of percent.\n\nWorld reserves exceed 2,000,000 t, with China at 830,000 t, Russia 350,000 t,\nBolivia 310,000 t, Kyrgyzstan 260,000 t, and Myanmar 140,000 t. Reserves are\nample; access and refining capacity are the constraints.\n\n## Notable sources & producers\n\n| Source / producer | Strategic significance |\n|---|---|\n| **Hunan and Guangxi (China)** | The Xikuangshan district and the smelting base that finishes most of the world's concentrate. |\n| **Chinese smelter groups** | Above 85% of world refining capacity, and the reason a mine outside China still depends on China. |\n| **Anzob (Tajikistan)** | The largest non-Chinese mine complex, at 20% of world supply. |\n| **Russian producers** | 32,000 t in 2025 under sanctions, with output routed through Asian buyers. |\n| **Bolivian and Myanmar artisanal supply** | Small-scale production that responds fast to price and reports slowly. |\n| **Stibnite Gold Project (Perpetua, Idaho)** | Broke ground October 2025 with $80 million of conditional U.S. Department of War funding; 14 million tons of reserves at a 0.42% antimony cutoff. |\n| **Stibnite Hill Mine (Montana)** | Mining started November 2025, the first new U.S. antimony mine in decades. |\n| **Larvotto and Australian projects** | 110,000 t of reserves and the non-Chinese supply the West is counting on after 2028. |\n\n## What is it used for?\n\n- flame retardants for plastics, textiles, cabling, and building materials,\n  roughly half of consumption\n- lead-acid battery grids and alloys, near 15%\n- ammunition primers, tracer compositions, and armour-piercing cores\n- polyethylene terephthalate (PET) polymerisation catalysts\n- glass clarifiers, including photovoltaic cover glass\n- semiconductors, infrared detectors, and thermoelectric devices\n\n## Why is it important?\n\nAntimony sits in two places that tolerate substitution poorly: fire safety\ncodes and ordnance specifications. Both qualify a formulation against a\nstandard, so changing the chemistry means requalifying the product rather than\nswapping an input.\n\nDefence demand gives the market its political weight. Primers, tracers,\narmour-piercing cores, and night-vision optics place a 110,000-tonne market\ninside the industrial base of every military that manufactures ammunition, and\ntrioxide clarifies photovoltaic cover glass, tying the same market to solar\nbuild rates.\n\n## Is there a substitute?\n\nSubstitutes exist for each application and cost performance in all of them.\nUSGS lists organic compounds and hydrated aluminium oxide as flame-retardant\nalternatives; chromium, tin, titanium, zinc, and zirconium compounds for\nantimony chemicals in enamels, paint, and pigment; and combinations of\ncalcium, copper, selenium, sulfur, and tin for lead-acid battery alloys.\n\nEach carries a qualification burden. Halogen-free flame retardants need higher\nloadings and change the plastic's mechanical properties, and a substituted\nbattery alloy changes grid corrosion behaviour over the cell's life.\nSubstitution follows sustained high prices by years rather than quarters,\nwhich is why the 2024 move drew announcements rather than displacement.\nRecycling supplies the rest of the answer: antimony recovers from old lead-\nacid batteries alongside the lead, the largest supply source outside primary\nmining.\n\n## How is it transported?\n\n**mine → concentrator → truck or rail → port → container vessel → smelter → refined metal or trioxide → manufacturer**\n\nAntimony moves in containers rather than bulk. Concentrate travels in bags or\ndrums, metal ships as ingot, and trioxide moves as packaged powder under dust\nand exposure controls, since the compound is classed as a suspected human\ncarcinogen. Container movement leaves the physical chain flexible and the\nregulatory chain rigid: a cargo reroutes in days, and a licence holds to the\nterms it was issued under.\n\n## Transportation risks\n\n### Chinese export licensing\n\nAntimony sits on China's dual-use export control list, so every outbound\nshipment requires an approved licence, and that authority operates\nindependently of any port, vessel, or route. **The binding constraint on\nantimony is an administrative decision rather than a physical bottleneck\nanywhere on the map.**\n\nChina added the metal to that list in August 2024, banned exports to the\nUnited States in December 2024, and suspended the ban on November 9, 2025\nuntil November 27, 2026. The suspension leaves the licensing requirement in\nplace and continues to exclude United States military end users.\n\n### Mine-to-smelter haulage\n\nBolivian, Myanmar, and Tajik output reaches a smelter by road over long\ndistances through difficult terrain. Artisanal supply responds to price within\nmonths and reports volumes slowly, which leaves the market trading on\nestimates.\n\n### Sanctioned supply\n\nRussian production of 32,000 t moves under sanctions, which routes it toward\nbuyers willing to transact and removes it from Western supply arithmetic.\n\n## How long does it store?\n\nAntimony stores indefinitely. Metal ingot develops a surface oxide that leaves\nthe metal beneath intact, and trioxide powder holds in sealed packaging for\nyears while it stays dry.\n\nThat stability makes stockpiling effective, which is why governments hold\nstrategic reserves and why consumers built inventory through 2024 and 2025. In\na 110,000-tonne market a few months of buyer inventory is a visible share of\nannual supply, and inventory cycles move the price as much as mine output\ndoes.\n\n## Historical price behavior\n\nAntimony metal, USGS monthly and annual averages with the current assessment:\n\n| Period | Antimony metal |\n|---|---:|\n| November 2021 | $21,200/t |\n| August 2024 | $21,600/t |\n| December 2024 | $39,900/t |\n| **June 2025** | **$60,600/t** |\n| November 2025 | $44,750/t |\n| 2025 annual average | $55,100/t |\n| **September 18, 2026** | **$51,800/t** |\n\nThe shape of that series is policy rather than geology. The price nearly\ndoubled between August and December 2024, the months in which China restricted\nexports and then banned shipments to the United States, and gained a further\n52% by June 2025. It gave back ground through late 2025 and into 2026 as\nbuyers worked down inventory, non-Chinese projects advanced, and the ban moved\ninto suspension. Across the cycle the metal gained 247% in 2024, lost 17% in\n2025, and entered September 2026 down 40% year over year. A market this small\nprices announcements as hard as it prices tonnes.\n\n## Current price & market — September 21, 2026\n\n| Market reference | Current level |\n|---|---:|\n| **Antimony metal, spot** | **$51,800/t** |\n| **Year-over-year change** | **−40%** |\n| **Antimony trioxide, Rotterdam, Q2 2026** | **$28,270/t** |\n| **2025 annual average** | **$55,100/t** |\n| **2025 world mine production** | **110,000 t** |\n\nThe market has been working through the 2024 shock in reverse. Trioxide in\nRotterdam fell 26.7% quarter over quarter into mid-2026 on ample supply, and\nFastmarkets assessed Rotterdam metal at $58,000–59,650/t in May 2026 against\n$51,800/t in September.\n\nThe supply response arrives on mine schedules rather than trading timelines.\nThe Idaho project broke ground in October 2025 and Montana's Stibnite Hill Mine\nstarted in November 2025. USGS withheld United States mine production for 2025\nto protect company data, which is itself the signal that domestic output\nresumed.\n\nThe licence regime sets the ceiling. Availability outside China rests on the\nNovember 27, 2026 renewal decision rather than on a production number.\n\n**Current-price links:**\n[Fastmarkets — Antimony prices](https://www.fastmarkets.com/metals-and-mining/minor-metals/antimony-prices/) ·\n[USGS — Mineral Commodity Summaries: Antimony](https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-antimony.pdf)\n\n*Price note: USGS publishes monthly and annual averages for antimony minimum\n99.65% on a cost-insurance-freight basis, while Rotterdam in-warehouse\nassessments, Chinese domestic quotes, and trioxide prices each measure a\ndifferent grade, location, and delivery term, and move on their own basis.\nSpot assessments and annual averages diverge sharply in a market this thin.*\n\n## Strategic risks\n\n1. Refining concentration above 85% in one country, which applies to\n   non-Chinese mine supply as well.\n2. Export licensing as a policy instrument, renewable or withdrawable on an\n   administrative calendar.\n3. Mine supply at 85.5% in three countries, two of them under sanctions or\n   conflict pressure.\n4. Market size of 110,000 t a year, small enough that one mine moves the\n   global balance.\n5. Qualification burden in flame retardants and ordnance, which slows\n   substitution to a multi-year timescale.\n6. Artisanal supply in Bolivia and Myanmar that reports late and responds to\n   price rather than to contracts.\n7. Defence demand that competes directly with civilian flame-retardant volume\n   in a fixed supply pool.\n8. Project lead times that place meaningful non-Chinese refining after 2028.\n\n## What can move the market?\n\n- Chinese export licence approval rates, the November 2026 suspension\n  decision, and changes to the dual-use control list\n- Idaho and Montana ramp rates and United States output disclosure\n- Australian and other non-Chinese project timelines and financing\n- defence procurement and ammunition production rates\n- lead-acid battery output and secondary recovery volumes\n- photovoltaic glass demand and solar build rates\n- Russian sanctions scope and routing\n- Bolivian and Myanmar artisanal supply response\n- consumer inventory levels, which set the depth of price moves\n- USGS and Chinese production revisions\n- flame-retardant regulation and halogen-free substitution mandates\n\nAntimony prices respond to licence policy faster than to tonnage, which is why\na regulatory announcement moves the market more than a mine does.\n\n## Xin.bz bottom line\n\nAntimony is a small metal with a large footprint: half of it stops plastics\nfrom burning, and the rest sits in batteries, ammunition, and glass.\n\nThe market's defining number is the 85% of refining capacity that sits in one\ncountry rather than the 110,000 tonnes mined each year. Mine supply in\nBolivia, Myanmar, Tajikistan, and Central Asia converges on Chinese smelters,\nso the location of a furnace says more about who controls the metal than the\nlocation of a deposit does.\n\nThat refining position is paired with a licence regime. Export authority lets\none government set availability for everyone else without touching a mine, a\nport, or a ship, and the price series since 2024 records that authority being\nexercised. The Western response runs at mine speed, with refining capacity\noutside China arriving after 2028.\n\n**Antimony is the clearest case in commodities where the chokepoint is a\nsignature rather than a strait.**\n\n## Sources / market data\n\n- U.S. Geological Survey. *Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 — Antimony*. February 2026.\n- Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China. Dual-use export control announcements, August 2024, December 2024, and November 9, 2025.\n- Fastmarkets. Antimony MMTA standard grade II, in-warehouse Rotterdam assessments, 2026.\n- ChemAnalyst. Antimony trioxide Rotterdam price index, 2026.\n- Perpetua Resources. Stibnite Gold Project reserve and construction disclosures, 2025–2026.\n- United States Antimony Corporation. Stibnite Hill Mine operational statements, 2025–2026.\n- U.S. Department of War. Critical minerals funding awards, October 2025."
}