Antimony is a rare, silver-grey metal. It's most common use is is as a fire retardant in objects as diverse as toys, clothing & car & plane seat covers. As an alloy it is also used in soldering, in lead batteries & in ball bearings. It is now also finding some use in microelectronics. It's a tiny market. Worldwide 187,000 tons were produced in 2009. To put that in perspective, somewhere near 16M tons of Copper were produced in the same time.

But here's the CLINCHER: of those 187,000 tons, 170,000 - or 91% - came from China. But China has capped production this year to 100,000 tons. With demand unchanged above 150,000 tons this has forced a SUPPLY CRUNCH. As a result, the price has tripled from $4,000/ton to about $12,000/ton. Even at those high prices, antimony will still be bought. The amount of metal used in, say a seat cover, is so small that a higher antimony price barely affects the overall economic viability of the industrial item in question.

Nobody quite knows why China has capped production. In the central of Hunan, which produces about 60% of the world's antimony, 100's of illegal antimony smelters have been closed down. This may be due to pollution. The area has a high rate of lung cancer & other illnesses. Antimony & many of its compounds are toxic. The effects of antimony poisoning are similar to arsenic poisoning. Some of the smelters have been told that they may re-open once they comply with environmental regulations.

In that context, you can understand China's decision. But the challenge now is to BUILD VIABLE ANTIMONY MINES OUTSIDE CHINA. And that's a challenge that's being led by - of all people - the Chinese. Last year the Hunan Nonferrous Metals Corporation - the biggest antimony producer in China - paid $29.5M in cash for the Canadian Beaver Brook Antimony Mine. This was North America's only producing mine!