Locksley’s breakneck journey to re-establish a mine-to-metal antimony market in the US aligns perfectly with the White House and Department of Defense’s drive to create a domestic critical-mineral capability with antimony of particular interest. The metal is central to national defence, semiconductors and advanced alloys.
China, which pumps out nearly 80 per cent of the world’s antimony, shocked global markets in 2024 when it slammed the export door shut, sending prices rocketing 300 per cent to more than US$55,000 (A$82,000) a tonne.
In the wake of a massive supply squeeze in the West, the US has placed a premium on developing its own secure sources and Locksley’s Mojave project has quickly emerged as one of the nation’s most advanced primary pathways to domestic antimony production.
The deal is just one of several moving parts as Locksley shifts into full production mode. The company is already working with top-tier US engineers and EPCM contractors to lock in plant design and delivery timelines. Meanwhile its Houston-based partnership with Rice University continues to sharpen the research around a low-cost and green antimony extraction process.
The Desert Antimony mine, which forms part of the company’s Mojave project in California’s historic mining belt, last operated in 1937 and remains one of the highest-grade known antimony occurrences in the continental US.
The project also shares a boundary with mining giant MP Material’s world class Mountain Pass rare earths mine which is America’s only producer of the critical minerals.
Until recently, no modern day exploration had been run across the ground. However, Locksley ran a rock chip sampling program across the old mine earlier in the year and literally tripped over one sample that returned grades up to a whopping 46 per cent and more than one kilogram per tonne of silver. The discovery lit the fuse and set the scene for a renewed exploration push at the old timer’s mine.
Adding to the project’s credentials a 3D mapping program was run over the ground three months ago, which extended the Desert project’s mineralised corridor fourfold from 300 metres to a thumping 1.2 kilometres.
Armed with a US$191 million funding letter of interest from the US Export-Import Bank, research partnerships with Rice University and Hazen, and a fully integrated mine-to-market strategy, Locksley is poised to move into a transformative phase.
The company is positioning itself to become the first producer of fully American-sourced antimony in nearly a century – a milestone that would place it squarely at the centre of America’s new industrial revival.
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