Mandalay Resources announced “below expectations” production statistics for Q2 2022 with 11.1koz of gold and 523t of antimony contained in concentrates mined at the Costerfield deposit in Australia.

Costerfield is currently the sole antimony-producing operation in Australia and Mandalay Resources has been a consistent supplier of gold-bearing antimony concentrates since it started production in 2006. Project Blue’s antimony analysis estimates that in 2022 Mandalay will account for around just below 3% of the global antimony supply and 6% of production outside of China, however, this share is forecast to decline over the medium term.

Despite its relatively small volume on the global stage, gold-bearing antimony concentrates have played a key role in the development of the antimony industry, with the Costerfield ore having found its way to most of the major antimony refiners in China. Since 2020, concentrates have also been exported to Oman, where Strategic & Precious Metals Processing (SPMP) company has established the potential to produce over 15% of global antimony ingot output.

SPMP started construction of the Oman Antimony Roaster (OAR) plant in the Sohar Port of Oman in 2017 and one of the key challenges for the plant is and will be consistent antimony feed security to support its planned capacity. The OAR is designed to process gold-bearing concentrates and Costerfield at capacity could account for 10-20% of its ore requirements. The added challenge is that since 2018 several major Chinese antimony smelters have adopted flowsheets to benefit from gold by-product credits and have turned to increasing imports and saving domestic resources. This means that SPMP is competing against the industry leaders for antimony concentrates on the global market, which can supplement any lack of supply with domestic mines.