Gathering geopolitical turbulence is opening opportunities for antimony and tungsten suppliers
Big opportunities for #ECR and #GMET in the global race to meet the rising demand for these very critical metals
Global supply networks were already being rewired before the second Trump administration took office. But the sense of urgency has been supercharged by the President’s extension of tariffs to Western economies as well as China, and credible threats to withdraw of military support from Europe.
As Western economies seek to ween themselves off their habitual dependence on Chinese resources, and European nations face up to breaking their long time reliance on the US for defence, supply chains for critical metals and minerals are being reinvented.
Two materials are particularly important. Antimony and tungsten both have a wide range of industrial and military applications, and the supply of both has depended on China and Russia. Prices have soared as those established sources have dried up, presenting big opportunities for companies willing and able to step up and meet rising demand.
Antimony: critical for the energy transition and defence
Antimony’s resistance to flame and heat make it ideal for the production of batteries, particularly lead-acid storage batteries and those used in cars. It is a transition metal, used, for example, for the cover glass on solar cells. It is a component in smartphone screens. And it is vital for defence supply chains, used in nuclear weapons, for night vision goggles, ammunition and infrared sensors, and for bullet cores, explosives and shrapnel-based weapons. Whether or not the mooted ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia holds, or even takes effect, European demand for munitions will continue to rise. Ukraine has been drawing on an ageing military inventory that will need to be replaced.
China, Russia and Tajikistan produce about 87pc of the world’s supply of antimony, with China accounting for nearly half the global market share. Even Russia’s deposits tend to be mined by Chinese-owned companies. As trade relations between the US and China have continued to deteriorate Beijing has banned antimony exports to the US.
With Chinese and Russian supplies closed off, the West is scrambling to open up new supplies – the US has not mined any marketable antimony since the late 1990s. Estimates indicate the world needs about 120,000 tonnes a year but is only producing some 80,000 tonnes. Spot prices for antimony in both China and the US have more than doubled in the past 18 months, touching $40,000 per tonne.
ECR Minerals
The shortfall is presenting opportunities for nimble suppliers. Larvotto Resoruces is due to open Australia’s biggest antimony mine next year, aiming to meet as much as 7pc of global demand. Resolution Minerals has announced a binding agreement to acquire three exploration projects focused antimony and gold in New South Wales and Queensland. And ECR Minerals (AIM:ECR) is optimising a fast evolving portfolio of Australian and Canadian assets to capitalise on antimony’s increasing strategic importance.
ECR owns outright the Bailieston and Creswick gold projects in central Victoria, and has three approved exploration permits for a relatively unexplored area in Lolworth Range, Queensland, west of the well known Charters Towers gold district. The company continues to progress plans to bring its Blue Mountain project in Queensland into commercial production.
Antinomy samples from Baillieston have produced exceptional grades, including 0.3 metres grading 32pc and 0.1 metre grading 1.20pc, with 12 samples returning traces of more than 0.1pc. ECR is preparing for a step out drilling campaign in light of geological analysis suggesting Baillieston is analogous to other narrow, high-grade gold-antimony deposits found throughout Central Victoria.
The prospect has received considerable interest from potential buyers. Last year Baillieston was one of a set of tenements valued by a prospective purchaser at AUD$4.5m. ECR now believes Baillieston ‘represents an attractive possible strategic purchase as a potentially valuable asset in its own right’. The company is ‘expanding discussions regarding the potential sale of the assets to include additional interested parties’.
ECR has presented the Blue Mountain project, which currently encompasses ‘a relatively straightforward alluvial gold system’ reported to contain at least 100,000 ounces, as another excellent opportunity to generate revenues (the company is seeking to realise the value of AUD$75m of tax losses carried by the certain assets in Victoria.)
ECR says sampling indicates it is ‘increasingly evident that the historical work conducted by the previous owner holds significantly more interest than previously thought.’ Samples from a trenching and bulk concentrate sampling programme included 192.15 g/t and 97.40 g/t gold, and ‘highly encouraging’ results from ore samples demonstrated a recovery rate of 91.7pc gold. ECR believes that if ‘these results are repeatable across the Blue Mountain Project area, then the Company may have a commercial project suitable for a production plant on site’.
Work continues to further illuminate the promise of the Creswick, Tambo and Lolworth prospects, all prospective for gold.
Drilling at Creswick’s Kuboid Hill prospect has reported quartz/gold mineralisation continuity with ‘the hallmarks of a potential future small scale operation.’ High grade results include 8.87 g/t and 8.06 g/t gold over one metre, and extensive broad mineralisation in several holes where contiguous gold is present at 3.05 g/t over three metres, 2.25 g/t over four metres and 1 g/t Au over five metres.
Results from a maiden diamond drilling campaign at the Tambo Gold Project include 0.4 metres at 8.51 g/t gold and 0.15 metres at 10.6 g/t gold, highlighting ‘the potential for high-grade zones at depth, making it a key target for follow-up drilling.’
Rock chip sampling and trenching activities at Lolworth has uncovered both gold and ‘significant traces of silver’. The highest-grade gold results included 11.05, 14.15 and 14.7 g/t gold, and 23 rock chips returned silver grades greater than 10 g/t silver with six samples exceeding 50 g/t silver. Trenching at the Project’s Gorge Creek West Prospect has identified broader zones of gold mineralisation, including best grades of 11.05, 3.72 and 4.82 g/t gold within a quartz shear zone. Last month nine of 165 pan concentrate samples collected from alluvial sources at Lolworth returned gold values greater than 9 ppm. Further prospects have been identified for sub-surface evaluation by drilling.
Earlier this month ECR announced its ambitions to expand beyond Australia by entering into a exclusivity arrangement and non-binding agreement to potentially acquire the entire share of capital of Maximus Minerals for £500,000. Maximus is the owner of three properties in Ontario, Canada with copper, zinc and gold showings. Following completion of the proposed acquisition ECR would have the option to acquire the Cat Key Project for an additional £329,000. The company said ‘the Proposed Acquisition will provide ECR with both a geographical and project expansion, taking our assets beyond Australia and beyond gold, whilst still utilising the skills of the team.’
ECR continues to offload non-core assets to release capital for its high priority gold projects. Following the sale of the company’s Avoca, Moormbool and Timor gold ventures in Victoria, and the subsequent spin-out of the Avoca and Timor projects, ECR has the right to receive up to AUD$2m in payments (subject to future resource estimation or production from the new owners.)
ECR currently trades at 0.2p with a market cap of £4.71m.
Tungsten: critical for steel, electronics and munitions
Tungsten is another key metal entangled in the world’s trading and military conflicts. With the highest melting point of any element, strength, and excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, it has a vast range of industrial and military applications. Diamond-hard tungsten carbide is used for drilling, and tungsten crucibles for steel and other furnaces. It is widely used for telecoms, electronics, semiconductors and power generation. And it is a critical component for armour-piercing projectiles.
Tungsten has traditionally been something of a niche product, with just over 100,000 tonnes a year supplied to a market valued at around $5bn. But even before the current crisis, it has always been a vital link in the supply chain for the sectors that depend on it.
As with antimony, China dominates the global market for tungsten, producing 83pc of last year’s supply. The US, which has not mined the metal commercially for the past decade, relies on China for more than a third of its imports. And as with antimony, the West is attempting to recalibrate its supply chains as that supply has been cut off. The US military has been given a 2027 deadline for ending any purchases of tungsten manufactured or mined in China or Russia. China has responded by restricting exports, specifying that tungsten will only be supplied for non-military applications.
Guardian Metal Resources
The supply crunch has opened huge opportunities for Western companies positioned to step up production.
One is Toronto-listed Almonty Industries, whose CEO said his customers are in a ‘state of disbelief’ following China’s latest move to restrict exports. Almonty’s stock soared more than 40pc in two days.
Another is AIM-listed Guardian Metal Resources (AIM:GMET, OTCQX:GMTLF), which continues to disclose the value of a set of Nevada-focused projects prospective for both tungsten and antimony (as well as gold, lithium, copper and silver). CEO Oliver Frieson told Mining.com: ‘It’s such a critical time right now, and really the US needs a domestic source … We do believe we are in a strong position ultimately, at some point, to receive some type of funding to support the developments of our projects’. GMET aspires ‘to lead reshoring efforts for critical metals in the US, specifically tungsten, aligning with U.S. president Donald Trump’s plan of “Unleashing American Energy”’.
The company’s flagship fully owned Pilot Mountain Project, located within Nevada’s prolific Walker Lake Mineral Belt, may prove to be the largest undeveloped tungsten prospect on US soil. Pilot Mountain comprises four existing mineral deposits, Garnet, Good Hope, Gunmetal and Desert Scheelite, all of which possess significant skarn-style tungsten-copper-silver-zinc mineralisation.
The first diamond core drillhole assay results from Pilot, published last autumn, intersected three zones of ‘highly significant’ tungsten mineralisation together with zinc, silver and copper. Standout high-grade assay results included 1.37pc tungsten trioxide (108.7 to 110.2 metres downhole depth) and 1.44pc tungsten trioxide (114 to 115.5 metres downhole depth). Core sample assay results returned upper limit of detection results for 20 tungsten samples at more than 3,000 ppm, and 15 zinc results at more than 10,000 ppm. The most recent results from Desert Scheelite, published earlier this month, continue to highlight the project’s promise. Work is also progressing at the Project’s Garnet and Gunmetal zones, which may host similar polymetallic tungsten-silver-copper-zinc mineralisation.
GMET has further underlined its commitment to tungsten by purchasing the Tempiute Tungsten Project focused on the Emerson Tungsten Mine in south-central Nevada. The company’s due diligence confirmed the presence of ‘a robust tungsten-rich skarn-type mineralising system at Tempiute with historical reference to underexplored mineralised breccia pipes as well as porphyry zones, pointing to the potential for significant exploration upside at the Project.’ Tempiute, which produced tungsten as recently as the late 1980s, is equipped with developed infrastructure and lies almost entirely within patented (private) mining claims, providing a platform for rapid redevelopment. Preparations are underway for a maiden ground work programme.
Earlier this month GMET published the first scientific paper to directly quantify likely demand for tungsten from the emerging nuclear fusion sector. The study predicts that global tungsten production will need to grow by 10 to 16 times from its current level by the end of the century to support the rollout of 500 MWth and 2000 MWth scale fusion reactors.
GMET’s licences are also prospective for antimony. The company’s fully owned Garfield copper-gold-silver prospect, a set of 65 lode mining claims, also in Mineral County, bears strong traces of the mineral. A January exploration update reported a sample returning overlimit antimony of more than 10,000 g/t (or 1pc). Results from the preceding two years indicate a zone along the continuum between a low-sulphidation to high sulphidation silver-gold system representing a deposit style not previously seen at Garfield.
While prioritising tungsten and antimony GMET is committed to ensuring investors remain exposed to the upside potential of other assets in the portfolio.
A ground magnetic geophysics survey at Garfield’s Kibby Basin Lithium Project, delineated three significant magnetic high anomalies close to surface mineralisation. Rock sampling has returned ‘exceptional and consistent high-grade copper-gold-silver results’, including up to 15.56pc and 9.58pc copper equivalent, with seven of the eight samples returning more than 1.75pc copper equivalent.
Initial results from an industrial garnet processing study at Pilot Mountain, published in January, indicate that a ‘garnet opportunity could be material to the Project going forward.’ (Industrial garnet is used in a wide array of industries including abrasive blasting, water-filtration media, water-jet-assisted cutting, in abrasive powders, nonslip coatings and sandpaper.)
And trenching results at the fully owned Golconda Summit Project, also in the Walker Lane Mineral Belt, confirm and extend high-grade gold mineralisation, suggesting discovery potential for a Carlin-type gold system. Results included up to 6.10 metres at 13.12g/t gold sampled across multiple fault structures.
GMET, which is up more than 120pc over the past year, currently trades at 31p with a market cap of £40m.
