| ISSUE 004 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| The antimony price is the number people follow, and it has come back down. Metal averaged $25 a pound across 2025 against $10.24 in 2024, peaking at $27.50 in June and falling to $20.30 by November, according to the US Geological Survey in February 2026. | |
| Primers are loaded with antimony trisulfide, refined to a military grade with its own specification. The US Army said in September 2025 that military grade antimony sulfide is an ingredient in nearly 30 percent of all military ammunition items, mainly in primers. Perpetua Resources and the Army said in July 2026 that China stopped supplying the specialised form in 2021, and that more than 300 types of ammunition use it. Across all US uses, flame retardants and other metal products take 49 percent, antimonial lead and ammunition 40 percent. | |
| China’s Ministry of Commerce Announcement 46 of 3 December 2024 carries two clauses. The first prohibits exporting dual-use items to US military users or for military end uses. The second barred gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials to the United States generally. Announcement 72 of 9 November 2025 suspended the second until 27 November 2026 and left the first standing. US net import reliance for antimony reached 91 percent of apparent consumption in 2025 on the same USGS figures. | |
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| PLATE · MOUNTAIN PASS RARE EARTH FACILITY, CALIFORNIA, 2011 |
| In July 2010 China cut its rare earth export quota, capping second half shipments 70 percent below the previous year’s level, a 40 percent reduction for the full year, according to the Congressional Research Service. Prices followed. Molycorp, which owned the Mountain Pass deposit in California, reported an average realised price of $72.10 per kilogram of rare earth oxide equivalent in the second quarter of 2011, against $37.73 in the first. |
| Capital arrived quickly. Molycorp’s modernisation and expansion of Mountain Pass, Project Phoenix, was budgeted at $781 million, with a Phase 1 rate of 19,050 tonnes a year targeted for the end of 2012, per its August 2011 filing with the SEC. Supply came on worldwide and prices fell. On 25 June 2015 Molycorp and twenty affiliated debtors filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions in Delaware, and the company later reported a net loss of $256 million for that quarter. |
| Capacity paid for by a price is exposed to that price, and the price moved years before the plant did. The antimony trisulfide work is carried by appropriation, which puts it on a procurement clock. In both cases the interval between the shock and the first qualified material is measured in years. |
| PLATE · MODULAR MINERAL PROCESSING PLANT, IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY, IDAHO FALLS | |||
| On 29 July 2026 Perpetua Resources, the US Army and Idaho National Laboratory cut the ribbon on a modular mineral processing plant at INL in Idaho Falls. It separates antimony from ore mined at the Stibnite Gold Project in central Idaho. INL says it runs 24 hours a day at roughly one ton of material per day. | |||
| Col. Steve Adcock, Portfolio Management Executive for Ammunition and Energetics at Picatinny Arsenal, called the plant “an important step toward reducing America’s dependence on foreign sources of antimony” in the July 2026 announcement. | |||
| Since 2022 Perpetua has been awarded more than $87 million by the Department of War and the Army, including over $59 million in Defense Production Act Title III funds. US primary antimony smelter output in 2025 was 700 tons of metal and oxide, from one company in Montana running on imported feedstock. Mining started at the Stibnite Hill Mine in Montana in November. | |||
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| Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence. | |||
| FREE. NO STOCK PICKS. NO PREDICTIONS. | |||
| Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment. |
