An Australian mining company with claims near Fairbanks is looking to capitalize on China banning certain mineral exports to the United States.
Felix Gold, a publicly-traded company, is trying to revive antimony production at the Scrafford Mine in the Treasure Creek area about 10 miles north of town. The mine used to produce the silvery metal, but it’s stayed dormant for decades.
Along with gallium and germanium, antimony is one of three minerals that China recently said it would stop exporting to the United States.
After China announced the ban on Dec. 3, the price of the commodity jumped 40% in a day.
That’s after antimony’s value per metric ton had already broken price records earlier this year, in September.
“It’s the hottest market for metal. It’s gone from $12,000 at the start of this year. It’s striking over $40,000 a ton at the moment," said Joseph Webb, Felix Gold’s executive director, speaking during this month’s investor’s call.
“This year it just became a crisis point. You’ve got a growing demand, you’ve got China, that control – China and Russia and Bolivia – control over 90% of the supply chain, for antimony, and now [China has] banned the export of it,” he said.
As a commodity, antimony is framed as a minor metal – not up there with bigshot industrial metals like copper or zinc.
But the Department of the Interior does identify it as one of 50 critical minerals. And even before the December ban, antimony had captured the spotlight multiple times this year for being at the center of previous trade restrictions imposed by China.
Manufacturers use antimony for things like military equipment, flame retardants and solar panels, and China dwarfed other countries production of it in 2023, accounting for about half of the global antimony supply.
The United States hasn’t had any domestic antimony mines since 2001 and has relied on imports since the 1990s, when the Stibnite Gold Mine in Idaho stopped production.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies says the drop off in U.S. production of antimony started years earlier, in the 1970s. That’s because regulations for mining the metal were strengthened due to environmental and health risks associated with antimony, which is carcinogenic and poisonous to humans.
But in conjunction with China now ceasing antimony exports to the U.S., Webb says the lacking domestic supply has sent some companies scrambling to fill in the gap.
“We think this is a race to get into production … and it’s got the underlying theme of security – national security – to the U.S.,” he said.
The Stibnite Gold Mine was formerly the country’s largest antimony producer. Its owner, Perpetua Resources, has been awarded $75 million from the Department of Defense in recent years to begin reestablishing antimony’s domestic supply chain.
Similarly, but on a smaller scale, Felix Gold is looking for government support to get the Scrafford Mine up and running. At least two other companies with operations in Alaska also are in the race to produce antimony: Nova Minerals and U.S. Antimony.
In the December investors’ call, Webb said the company plans to submit a government funding application in February. The company remains hopeful that the Scrafford mine will be permitted and operational by late 2025, expecting it to produce about 5,000 tons of the mineral per year.
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