Supply Chains Research
Critical Minerals Supply Chain Explorer
Critical & strategic minerals and materials are an extremely diverse group of resources with a wide variety of applications, market sizes and structures, and key risks. As Australia now has 36 officially designated critical and strategic minerals, ranging from copper to scandium, there are few recommendations or analyses that apply cleanly to the entire space. Given their variety, governments have a range of rationales for classifying minerals as critical, as well as many different policy instruments and responses to their supply chains management.
The East Asian Bureau of Economic Research has conducted scenario analyses of selected critical minerals to visualize and clarify their market structures, exposure to risks and shocks, and evaluate various policy responses that the Australian government might take with respect to each mineral.
View the Full Policy Brief
This interactive explorer accompanies formal policy briefs with the full set of discussions and recommendations:
Select a mineral from below to explore the data insights.
Overview
Antimony’s criticality is derived from its applications in the defence manufacturing industry. Lead-antimony alloys are used heavily in ammunition manufacturing, and antimony powder is combined with indium in a range of infrared optical and sensing systems with no known input substitutes. However, defence applications make up a relatively small percentage of applications, likely no more than 15% of global demand, with all defence final production occurring outside of Australia.
Production & Trade Position
Both antimony supply and demand are concentrated in China, accounting for around 50% of global mined production, and almost 80% of smelting output. At present, Australia is a minor participant in the global antimony industry, with only one active antimony mine – Costerfield. Australian antimony mine operations are similar to most operations globally, in the sense that they are primarily gold mines, with antimony as a co-occurring discovery.
Costerfield Antimony Production (2012–2024)
As a net exporter of raw antimony ores, Australia's production is all from Costerfield, located in Victoria. Costerfield's five-year production average is 2,800 tonnes of contained Sb. Recent output sits below this benchmark due to decreasing ore grades.
Sources: EABER Studies, Company annual reports
Raw antimony refers to ores and concentrates, the rock bodies prior to smelting or refining. The chart below shows export shares of ores and concentrates by country, including Australia's share.
Sources: ABS, WITS, UNComTrade. Data date 2024.
Sources: EABER Studies, Company annual reports
Global Antimony Facilities
This section maps major antimony mines and processing facilities worldwide to show where supply is physically located (by 2024). China holds the world's largest antimony reserves, followed by Russia and Bolivia. Despite Australia's high-grade deposits with prospective reopenings of pre-existing projects, its total reserves of 140,000 tonnes remain modest.
Antimony supply scenarios (2025–2030)
We explore scenarios in which China or ex-China supplies of processed antimony for defence purposes is cut, and the degree to which an expanded Australian supply assists in meeting global defence needs, across both raw (Antimony Ores) and refined antimony markets.
Australia produces high-grade antimony ores mainly as a by-product of gold and accounts for around 4–5% of global aggregate antimony as of 2024, exporting most ores and concentrates to processors in China.
Use the sliders below to adjust supply shocks both from China and ex-China, and Australian output, to see how these changes affect the composition of supply covering the demand from Western countries, with Australia's contribution to the market.
Total Strategic Demand vs Australia’s Contribution
Assumption: Strategic (defence) demand for refined antimony is 15% of Western aggregate antimony demand (in both ores and refined forms).
Sources: EABER Studies, ABS, Company reports
Antimony Ores: An All-Case Small Market Share
Even under generous assumptions, Australia covers only a small share of global strategic demand. In the best case of Australian production expansion, maximum potential exports translate to ~14% of global strategic demand — but only when refineries in the world reopen and the ex-China supply slumps, in turn elevating demand for ores as the major antimony export from Australia. However, as suppliers around the world are also investing in expanding antimony ores production, strategic demand is likely to be met by these alternative non-Chinese sources.
Refined Antimony: A Persistent Import Gap
For the refined antimony sector, to meet the declared output by leading smelter projects (Port Pirie), around 34% share of the refinery's required feedstock still needs to be sourced from overseas, even in the case where 70% of Australia's antimony concentrate output is redirected from export markets. This gap persists through and very likely beyond 2030, meaning expanding smelters does not turn Australia into a self-sufficient refined antimony supplier. Instead, it competes with other Western smelters for a limited pool of ex-China feedstock.
Intervention makes a Limited Impact
Policy intervention is unlikely to materially alter Australia’s global position.
We modelled shocks to the global antimony production system. We focused on supply shocks emanating from tightened export controls by China. Our analysis finds that there are limited economic or security grounds for publicly supporting antimony mining or refinement in Australia. While there could be a tight market for antimony concentrates outside China, it is unlikely that there will be a critical shortage, yet other Western sources are already capable of meeting the defence needs.
Antimony mining is already cross subsidised by gold mining adequately. Australia has no advantage in smelting; Port Pirie is a lead processing facility that does not synergize existing Australian antimony mines; it would need to compete with smelters in Korea and the USA for feedstock, rather than adding to Western defence capacity.
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