Antimony Squeeze Drives Gold-Byproduct Projects From Nova Scotia to Australia

Two developments on opposite sides of the world are pulling antimony — and the gold that often comes with it — back into focus for anyone tracking supply-side pressure in metals markets.

In Nova Scotia, Military Metals (CSE: MILI) picked up a C$100,000 (roughly US$71,000) exploration grant from the province's Mineral Resource Development Fund. The money helps bankroll a diamond drilling campaign at West Gore, a past-producing antimony-gold property that supplied antimony during the First World War. The program calls for seven holes totalling about 1,750 metres, chasing the down-plunge extension of the historic workings.

That grant is small in dollar terms, but the signal matters. Governments are increasingly willing to co-fund exploration for minerals they've labelled strategic, and antimony sits squarely on those lists. It's used in flame retardants, batteries, and — critically for governments — ammunition and defense applications. West Gore's appeal is that antimony and gold occur together, so the same holes that test the antimony story also test a gold story.

Half a world away, Australia's Larvotto has started producing gold and antimony concentrate at its Hillgrove operation. The company is targeting roughly 7% of global antimony demand once the mine is running at pace. That's a meaningful chunk for a single asset, and it lands at a moment when antimony supply has tightened and prices have been elevated, partly on the back of Chinese export controls that reshaped the market over the past couple of years.

For a bullion buyer, the direct read is on the gold side. Neither project moves the spot price on its own — Hillgrove's gold output is modest against global mine supply, and West Gore is still at the drill stage. But projects like these show how strong gold prices and strategic-mineral incentives are combining to make marginal, historic, or byproduct-heavy deposits economic again.

The subtler point is about how the market is thinking. When a metal like antimony gets scarce enough that governments hand out grants and miners rush concentrate out the door, it tells you supply chains for a whole class of hard-to-source materials are under strain. Gold benefits from that same anxiety — as a monetary hedge rather than an industrial input — even if the mechanics differ.

Watch execution. Drill results at West Gore will determine whether the historic grade extends, and Hillgrove's ramp-up will test whether Larvotto hits its production targets on schedule. Both are the kind of incremental supply stories that, stacked together across the sector, shape where byproduct gold ounces come from over the next several years.