The US Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) recently published a tender seeking nearly 6.7mn lbs of antimony metal ingots for the national defense stockpile. Argus spoke with US Antimony chief executive Gary Evans — the winner of the contract worth up to $245mn — on the outlook of the antimony market and the company's expanded operations. Edited highlights follow:
How do you see antimony demand going forward? What industries do you see driving demand in 2026?
About 30-40pc of antimony demand is in fire retardants, whether it be for electrical wiring, roofing materials, canvas or tents. A lot of that ends up going into military applications. Aside from military demand, there are data centers being built and growth in AI technology and quantum computing. Wiring systems for those applications need to have antimony to stop fires. When you have acres of new roofs going up, all of that must have fire retardant for roofing. We know that antimony shortages have hurt the lead-based battery business.
We still have customer demands that we cannot meet.
What do you view as the next steps in your plan to supply more antimony to the US market? What are the challenges?
We are significantly expanding at our facility in Thompson Falls [Montana]. The plant does about 100 metric tonnes (t)/month of output. Beginning in January — once construction is done — we can start ramping up to 500 t/month, a five-fold increase in output.
We also have our Madero smelter in Mexico, which we restarted in April of this year. Most of our international shipments from Chad, Bolivia, Peru, Australia and Mexico are coming into our Madero plant.
As a company, we were only about 100 t/month all throughout 2025 going to 500-700 t/month in 2026. That is how we are trying to catch up and meet the demand.
Is US Antimony looking to further diversify feedstock sources or expand upon current supply agreements, such as Bolivia and Chad? Is the company looking to acquire more mining claims in Alaska and Montana?
For US feedstock, we reopened a mine in Montana about 45 days ago and have moved close to 500t of material down the mountain.
We have also leased close to 30,000 acres of mineral rights in Alaska. We did not have as much opportunity before winter to do work there this year because of permitting, as we did not get permits that we filed for in May until late September. We had to shut down for winter, but we will start back up in spring.
We would first like to have our own mining because that will be the lowest cost. As a result, our margins expand significantly rather than us having to buy feedstock. We are looking in both areas to pick up more claims.
Regarding Chad and Bolivia, we see those two countries as having some of the highest-grade antimony with the lowest impurities, as in no arsenic, lead nor sulfur.
We are trying to up our efforts in those areas, including hiring a consultant in Chad to help with sourcing material. We have signed a contract with a company out of Bolivia that could bring antimony metal to our facility in Thompson Falls.
We would love to be supplying ourselves, but I do not know if that is going to happen 100pc in 2026, maybe 2027.
Aside from Alaska mentioned in your earnings call, in what other locations has US Antimony looked to build a new smelter, if any? Or will the company continue to look at expanding Madero capacity?
We have looked at some other sites in the US. We have even bid on land, but we do not actively have anything going on now because we want to get our new expanded smelter up and running. However, if we win certain contracts that we were bidding on right now, then that would very likely cause us to need to build another smelter.
What additional steps has US Antimony taken to ramp-up ingot capacity now that you have received the DLA contract?
All the new contracts that we mentioned on the conference call, most of that can be made into antimony ingots that meet the qualifications for the DLA. We are anxiously trying to start fulfilling that contract right now.
Fortunately, we can provide finished product of antimony ingots from either Mexico or the US. The government has approved that, so it gives us lots of flexibility of using the Madero site with these international shipments.
