re antimony...
Fueled by trade tensions and foreign wars, a rush for an obscure mineral heats up in Alaska
A Texas company recently acquired 50 square miles of mining claims across interior Alaska. Now it wants to start trucking antimony — a mineral used in weapons and solar panels — to its processing plant in Montana.
alaskabeacon.com
By: Max Graham, Northern Journal - June 6, 2025 12:03 pm
Alaska hasn’t produced antimony — a shiny mineral used in weapons, flame retardants and solar panels — in almost 40 years.
That could change this summer, according to the executives of a Texas company that has snatched up more than 35,000 acres of mining claims in Alaska.
Dallas-based U.S. Antimony Corp. is looking to the state as a new source of antimony for its smelter in Montana, the only plant in the United States that refines the mineral.
Alaska’s antimony, the company says, could help the U.S. overcome a recent ban on exports of the mineral from China, the world’s top antimony producer. Antimony is among several minerals — many of which are used in renewable energy — that the U.S. has sourced primarily from China and other countries in recent decades. Efforts to build more mines in the U.S. have accelerated amid worsening trade tensions and growing demand.
With no active antimony mines, the U.S. in recent years has imported roughly 60% of its antimony from China. Meanwhile, need for the mineral has surged as antimony-laden arms flow to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The price of the mineral has quadrupled in the past year, rising from around $13,000 to $55,000 per ton.
U.S. Antimony is now expanding its Montana smelter and rushing to find more ore to supply it. Alaska is its “primary focus” for boosting production, an executive said in an interview last week.
In the past eight months, a U.S. Antimony subsidiary, Great Land Minerals, has acquired claims in three different areas of Alaska’s Interior: outside Fairbanks; near the small town of Tok; and along the Maclaren River off the Denali Highway, a scenic road that runs outside the national park.
U.S. Antimony says it’s looking to truck antimony ore some 2,000 miles from Alaska to its processing plant in Montana. That operation could start as soon as September, executives said on a recent call with investors.
“We can’t get that antimony from Alaska to Montana fast enough,” Joe Bardswich, U.S. Antimony’s chief mining officer, said on the call.
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Now that antimony prices are surging, though, U.S. Antimony representatives say every little bit is valuable. A 25-ton truck could carry some $600,000 worth of minerals, Bardswich said in an interview.
Full story: alaskabeacon.com |
