Evergold drills high-grade antimony in B.C.

Evergold (TSXV: EVER) reported its highest-grade antimony assays yet from the DEM project near Fort St. James, B.C., putting it in the lead among juniors hunting for the critical metal in Canada, the company said Wednesday.

Drill hole DEM24-05 returned 40 metres grading 0.42% antimony  starting from 344 metres downhole, including 2.5 metres of 3.6% antimony and 0.50 metre of 8.37% antimony.

“Most of our peers, all of our peers in fact, in Canada have been touting grab samples or the acquisition of properties but nobody has actually delivered drill results, but we have them, and they are very strong and very high grade over potentially mineable underground widths,” Kevin Keough, Evergold’s CEO, said by phone.

The metal increases the hardness of alloys and is used in advanced military systems, some battery technologies, and other industrial applications, including the production of flame retardant chemicals.

Breaking China’s monopoly

The West has been trying for years to loosen China’s grip on the supply of critical minerals and diversify its supply chains. But figures from the U.S. Geological Survey underscore just how little progress has been achieved—at least when it comes to antimony.

China produced more than 40,000 tonnes of the silvery-white metal in 2023, about 48% of the world’s total production of 83,000 tonnes, according to the USGS. Other producers include Tajikistan (26%), Turkey (7.2%), Myanmar (5.5%), Russia (5.2%), Bolivia (3.6%), and Australia (2.8%).

According to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S. has not mined antimony since the Sunshine mine in Idaho closed in 2001, and today imports about 63% of its antimony from China, 8% from Belgium, 6% from India and 4% from Bolivia. It retrieves the rest from recycling lead-acid batteries.

US-China trade tensions

Concerns about the critical mineral supply chain in Washington accelerated earlier this month when China banned exports of antimony, gallium and germanium to the U.S. on Dec. 3. That was in retaliation against U.S. restrictions on the export of advanced memory chips to China, unveiled on Dec. 2.

The tit-for-tat sanctions and anticipation of more trade disputes under incoming U.S. president Donald Trump, along with reduced supply from other sources of antimony like Russia, have driven prices higher. At the start of the year antimony hovered around US$12,000 per tonne but the price is now closer to US$33,000 per tonne, Evergold says.

“It’s a hot speculative commodity this year by virtue of the supply restrictions coming out of China and various other supply restrictions from other countries as well,” Keough said.

“Internal conflict in Myanmar has led to limited and unreliable supplies coming out of Southeast Asia, and Russian supplies to the West have been eliminated due to sanctions imposed following their invasion of Ukraine,” Evergold said in a release. “These negative supply shocks drive home the importance of securing reliable sources of antimony, and other critical elements.”

Evergold kicked off an initial three-hole drill program at its 28-sq.-km DEM property last year. The company is earning up to a 100% stake in the project, which also hosts gold, silver, cobalt, rhenium, molybdenum and tungsten.

“We’re really just getting going on the project,” Keough said. “Like so many juniors we’ve been struggling really to get the drill metres in. It’s been tough to raise money but the few holes we’ve managed to date are really turning up extremely promising results.”

In mid-afternoon in Toronto, Evergold’s shares were down 37.5% to 2¢ apiece on Wednesday afternoon in Toronto, giving the junior a market cap of about $3 million.