Global Antimony Market Projected to Reach $4.5 Billion by 2036, But the Binding Constraint Is the Permitting Clock
VANCOUVER, BC, Sept. 8, 2026 /CNW/ -- American News Group News Commentary - Antimony spent decades as an industrial afterthought, a flame retardant additive and a battery alloy that almost nobody outside the chemicals trade thought about. It is now a national security line item. Future Market Insights values the global antimony market at roughly US$2.5 billion in 2026 and projects approximately US$4.5 billion by 2036, a compound annual growth rate of about 6.2%. Capital has already responded, with governments and lenders putting billions behind Western supply. What money cannot buy is time, and the constraint on replacing Chinese antimony is not funding. It is how long it takes to permit a mine.
Active Companies from around the markets with current developments this week include: RUA GOLD Inc. (OTCQX: NZAUF) (TSX: RUA) (NZX: RGI), Perpetua Resources Corp. (Nasdaq: PPTA), United States Antimony Corporation (NYSE: UAMY), Americas Gold and Silver Corporation (NYSE American: USAS), and Nova Minerals Corp. (NYSE American: NVA).
Forecasters size the category differently but agree on direction. Emergen Research puts the market at about US$1.31 billion in 2025 rising to roughly US$2.5 billion by 2035, a compound annual growth rate of around 6.6%. The variance between houses reflects what each counts as antimony revenue rather than any disagreement about demand.
The reason the metal repriced sits in Beijing. In August 2024 China introduced export licensing on six antimony product categories, including antimony ore, antimony metal, antimony oxide and, pointedly, gold-antimony smelting and separation technology. In December 2024 it banned antimony exports to the United States outright. Antimony metal prices roughly doubled in the aftermath. China accounts for roughly half of global output, and the United States imports more than 85% of what it consumes.
Washington responded the way governments respond to a supply shock in a metal that goes into ammunition primers, armour-piercing rounds, night vision equipment and hardened alloys. Antimony was formally designated a critical mineral by both the United States and Canadian governments, and the Defense Logistics Agency announced plans to stockpile it. The practical difficulty is that there is no quick fix. The United States has no operating primary antimony mine, and a deposit takes years to permit and build no matter how urgent the need.
What follows is that the sector has split into distinct strategies for attacking the same clock. Some are buying scale with federal money and accepting the wait. Some are bolting antimony recovery onto ground that is already permitted and already producing. Some are trying to reach pilot output from a standing start. And a narrow category sits apart: antimony deposits already inside a permitting process, in jurisdictions aligned with Western supply chains, carrying enough gold alongside the antimony to be economic on their own terms. There are not many of them anywhere in the world.
RUA GOLD Inc. (OTCQX: NZAUF) (TSX: RUA) (NZX: RGI) Reports Highest-Grade Drill Results to Date at the Auld Creek Gold-Antimony Project
- Best intercept to date: 0.6m grading 82.9 g/t gold and 24.80% antimony in hole ACDDH119.
- 2.85m at 9.29 g/t gold and 13.71% antimony in ACDDH112, including 0.5m at 40.5 g/t gold.
- Broader zones as well as high grade: 32m at 2.11 g/t gold in ACDDH104 and 11.3m at 6.11 g/t gold in ACDDH108.
- 19,600m of drilling completed, supporting the pre-feasibility study required for the Fast-Track mining application.
- Substantive Fast-Track application targeted for October 2026, with the PFS to be published in December 2026.
RUA GOLD Inc. (OTCQX: NZAUF) (TSX: RUA) (NZX: RGI) reported on September 8, 2026 the highest-grade drill results to date from its Auld Creek gold-antimony project in the Reefton Goldfield on New Zealand's South Island. The headline number is unusual by any standard: hole ACDDH119 returned 0.6 metres grading 82.9 grams per tonne gold together with 24.80% antimony.
A single narrow intercept, however striking, is not a deposit. What gives the release its weight is that the high grades sit inside a wider pattern. ACDDH112 returned 2.85 metres at 9.29 g/t gold and 13.71% antimony, including half a metre at 40.5 g/t gold. ACDDH107 returned 1.9 metres at 10.1 g/t gold with 5.88% antimony, and ACDDH086 returned 2.75 metres at 15.4 g/t gold with 3.60% antimony. Alongside those, ACDDH104 cut 32 metres at 2.11 g/t gold and ACDDH108 cut 11.3 metres at 6.11 g/t, which is the kind of width that matters for a mine plan rather than a headline.
The Company describes the Auld Creek resource as extending over 1,000 metres in length and to more than 500 metres in depth, and says it remains open in all directions. Drill targeting was guided by structural mapping of the Fraternal Fault zone, which the Company reports at an overall orientation of 186 degrees dipping 84 degrees west, with intersecting shears and breccias oriented at 354 degrees on a moderate plunge. Drilling against those structural guides has demonstrated strong continuity of mineralization and what the Company characterises as a high success rate against planned targets.
Two features of the program are worth separating out. In certain shoots gold and antimony grades increase with depth, with visible gold observed in some intervals. In others, mineralized widths increase, with discrete hanging wall and footwall zones of higher antimony grade enveloping a broad zone running roughly 2 to 3 grams per tonne gold. The first pattern points to grade. The second points to tonnage. A deposit that shows both is a more flexible engineering problem than one that shows only one.
"These exceptional exploration results are informing the mine plan and reinforcing the significant development potential of the Auld Creek Project," said Robert Eckford, Chief Executive Officer of RUA GOLD. "The deposit continues to exceed our expectations and remains open in all directions. Our improved understanding of the orientation of the high-grade mineralized shoots will be crucial as we advance the next phase of drilling. The occurrence of visible gold is particularly encouraging and suggests that grades may improve with depth."
The timing is what connects this to the antimony backdrop. The 19,600 metre program was designed to improve resource confidence and to generate the geotechnical, hydrological and metallurgical data required for a pre-feasibility study, which in turn supports the Company's application under New Zealand's Fast-Track Approvals regime. Auld Creek was accepted as a listed project under that regime in July 2026, and the Company says it remains on track to submit its substantive application in October 2026 and publish the PFS in December 2026. Four rigs are to continue drilling through the fourth quarter, testing the deposit along strike and at depth.
RUA GOLD is the dominant landholder in the Reefton Goldfield with more than 120,000 hectares of permits, in a district the Company's technical report records as having historically produced over 2 million ounces of gold at grades of 9 to 50 grams per tonne. Its second project, Glamorgan, sits in the Hauraki District on the North Island, a region that has produced 15 million ounces of gold and 60 million ounces of silver. The Company also announced the appointment of Darren Prins as Interim Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary. Filings are available on SEDAR+.
There are several risks associated with the Company's plans.
RUA GOLD is an exploration-stage company with no mineral reserves defined at Auld Creek and no production or revenue. Historical district production figures describe the Reefton Goldfield generally and are not indicative of what may be recovered from the Company's permits. Reported drill intercepts are selective results and are not necessarily representative of the deposit as a whole; the reported intervals are downhole widths and true widths are not known. Acceptance as a listed project under the Fast-Track Approvals regime does not guarantee that a mining permit will be granted, or granted on the timeline indicated, and the October application and December pre-feasibility study dates are the Company's stated targets rather than commitments. Advancing a project of this kind is capital intensive and may require financing that has not been secured, which could dilute existing holders. Antimony prices have been volatile and fell materially through 2026 after their post-export-control spike.
Across the rest of the antimony supply chain, the same clock is producing very different strategies:
Perpetua Resources Corp. (Nasdaq: PPTA) is developing the Stibnite Gold Project in Idaho, a gold deposit carrying antimony credits whose value is being unlocked by permitting rather than discovery. Stibnite is positioned to host the only domestic reserve of antimony in the United States.
On May 21, 2026 the Board of the U.S. Export-Import Bank unanimously approved a US$2.9 billion senior secured long-term loan for the project under EXIM's Make More in America Initiative, structured as a 13-year facility. President and Chief Executive Officer Jon Cherry described the loan as positioning the company to bring Stibnite to life and as a signal of a new day in American mineral independence. An updated Technical Report Summary published in March 2026 showed an after-tax net present value at a 5% discount rate of US$3.5 billion at a US$3,250 per ounce gold price, rising to US$6.1 billion at US$4,500 per ounce.
The instructive part for anyone reading the sector is what those numbers do not remove. Even the largest American antimony name in the public market, with nearly three billion dollars of federal lending behind it, still has years of permitting, financing and construction ahead of it before antimony is delivered to a customer. That is the timeline the whole category is working against.
United States Antimony Corporation (NYSE: UAMY) is the only fully integrated antimony company in the world outside China and Russia, running mining, milling, smelting and sales across operations in the United States, Mexico and Canada, alongside a zeolite business. It uplisted from NYSE American to the New York Stock Exchange on March 11, 2026 and maintains a secondary listing on NYSE Texas under the same symbol.
In second quarter results reported August 11, 2026, the company posted revenue of US$7.9 million against US$10.5 million a year earlier and net income of US$0.1 million. Antimony pounds sold rose 26% excluding Defense Logistics Agency volumes, zeolite revenue grew 110% year over year, and working capital doubled to US$70.0 million from US$35.0 million at March 31.
The share price reaction was severe. Management cut full-year 2026 revenue guidance to a range of US$60 million to US$75 million from US$125 million as antimony prices fell from roughly US$28 to US$14 per pound, and the stock dropped around 25% on the day. Chief Executive Officer Gary Evans indicated he expects antimony prices near US$10 per pound through 2026. It is a useful corrective to any reading of this sector that treats the strategic case and the price case as the same thing. Supply security and spot pricing can move in opposite directions, and in 2026 they did.
Americas Gold and Silver Corporation (NYSE American: USAS) demonstrates the one route that shortens the clock rather than waiting it out. Its Galena Complex in Idaho's Silver Valley is the only currently producing antimony mine in the United States, and it reached that position without permitting an antimony mine at all.
The antimony at Galena sits in tetrahedrite ore alongside silver and copper, occurring at a ratio of roughly 0.7 to 1 against copper. Output therefore scales with the rate of silver mining rather than requiring a dedicated orebody, a dedicated permit or dedicated capital. Company disclosure for the first three quarters of 2025 reported 447,466 pounds of antimony produced alongside 615,817 pounds of copper. The Company acquired full ownership of Galena in December 2024 in a transaction with Eric Sprott, who became its largest shareholder, and added the fully permitted, past-producing Crescent Silver Mine nine miles away in December 2025.
In February 2026 the Company formed a 51/49 joint venture with United States Antimony Corporation to build an antimony processing hub at the Galena site, an arrangement intended to create a domestic mine-to-finished-product chain on ground that is already permitted. In March 2026 it announced the discovery of seven new high-grade silver-copper-antimony veins and three silver-lead veins at Galena, together with the largest drilling campaign in its history at approximately 64,000 metres across the Galena Complex and its Cosalá operations in Mexico.
The comparison worth drawing is not between company sizes but between clocks. A by-product stream from a permitted, operating mine can respond to a supply shock in quarters. A new deposit, whatever its grade, responds in years. Both are needed, and they are not substitutes for one another.
Nova Minerals Corp. (NYSE American: NVA) is advancing the Estelle Gold and Critical Minerals Project in Alaska, a 514 square kilometre property in the Tintina Gold Belt hosting two defined multi-million-ounce gold resources and more than 20 prospects along a 35 kilometre trend, with antimony prospects at Stibium and Styx. The company moved its listing to NYSE American on June 17, 2026 in connection with its redomiciliation to the United States, having previously traded on Nasdaq.
Its antimony strategy is funded by a US$43.4 million United States Department of War award. The company has produced antimony metal and military-grade antimony trisulfide at laboratory scale from Estelle stibnite ore, completed a winter freight mobilization moving approximately 1.5 million pounds of equipment to site, and is procuring processing equipment for a downstream antimony refinery at Port MacKenzie. Three diamond rigs have been operating around the clock through the Alaskan summer, with bulk sampling of over 50 tonnes of stibnite-rich material.
Nova targets initial pilot-scale antimony production in late 2026 to early 2027, which would make it one of the first Western sources of the metal outside existing producers. Like most names in this group it remains pre-production on antimony, and the gap between laboratory-scale output and a commercial supply chain is the whole of the problem the Western allies are trying to solve.
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Cautionary Note Regarding Exploration Results and Mineral Resources. RUA GOLD Inc. is an exploration-stage company. The Company has not defined any mineral reserve at the Auld Creek Project, and mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Drill intercepts, grades and sample values referenced in this article are selective results as reported by the Company and are not necessarily representative of mineralization on the property as a whole. Reported intervals are downhole widths; true widths are not known. Core samples were prepared by SGS Laboratories, Westport, which is independent of the Company, and analyzed by ALS Brisbane. Statements regarding deposit dimensions, continuity, structural orientation and the potential for grades to improve with depth are the Company's interpretations and are not assurances. Acceptance of the Auld Creek Project as a listed project under New Zealand's Fast-Track Approvals regime does not guarantee that any mining permit will be granted or granted on any particular timeline, and the stated October 2026 application and December 2026 pre-feasibility study dates are targets rather than commitments. Historical production figures cited for the Reefton Goldfield and the Hauraki District describe those districts generally, are drawn from the sources cited in the Company's disclosure, and are not indicative of results that may be achieved on the Company's permits. Readers should review the Company's disclosure record on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca in full.
Cautionary Note Regarding Referenced Companies. References to Perpetua Resources Corp., United States Antimony Corporation, Americas Gold and Silver Corporation and Nova Minerals Corp. are provided solely as market and sector context. Those companies are not peers, competitors, or financial comparables of RUA GOLD Inc. They are at materially different stages of development and scale, operate in different jurisdictions, and their results, financings, government awards, guidance, production figures and share performance are not indicative of RUA GOLD Inc.'s prospects. Production, joint venture and processing arrangements described for those companies relate to their own assets and operations only and imply no connection to the profiled company or its projects. None of those companies is involved in the production or distribution of this article. No partnership, affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement is implied. Market-size figures cited in this article are third-party projections of total market value and do not represent addressable revenue for any company named, including the profiled company. Government designations, stockpiling programs and export controls referenced in this article describe policy conditions and are not assurances of demand for, or the price of, any commodity.
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