Two newly-built antimony smelters outside China will bring production into the physical market in 2018, significantly altering the global antimony supply structure.
The two smelters, one located in Oman and the other in Tajikistan, have production capacities of 20,000 tonnes per year (tpy) and 5,000 tpy, respectively, representing approximately 12% and 3% of average annual world antimony production over the past five years. China has been the dominant global antimony supplier for more than a century, but its production proportion against the world's total ouput has decreased in the past few years to 78% from 85% previously, according to the United States Geologic Survey. This has been mainly as a result of China's production being curbed by the permanent shutdown of more than 100 small antimony plants in the 'world antimony capital' of Lengshuijiang in Hunan province in late March 2010, and below-cost antimony prices over the past three years. "Production in China may fall even further next year as antimony concentrates that were usually exported to China will start to be diverted to those two smelters [in...