Asian Metal held the 9th Antimony Forum on April 13-14 in Sanya, Hainan with Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star Co. Ltd. and Taojiang Jiutong Antimony Industry Co., Ltd. as the sponsors. In the warm spring, more than 200 representatives from over 150 antimony companies and units in China, Australia, Tajikistan, Oman, Japan, Europe and other countries and regions in the world attended the forum, where they expressed their views freely for common development. Speeches about supply and demand in the current antimony market of China, Japan and Australia as well as the status quo and outlook for China's antimony smelting processes were given during the forum. This is indeed a successful forum where attendees looked back the past, thought about the future, consolidated the friendship with old friends, made new friends, summarized experience and explored new paths together for future development.

The forum formally started at 9:00 am on April 13, when Mr. Ben Jiang, the Director of Content from Asian Metal, announced the opening of the forum as the host and expressed his sincere welcome and heartfelt gratitude to old and new friends to the forum on behalf of Asian Metal. Mr. Jiang noted that, with the basic end of the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic and foreign business has gradually returned to normal, and the antimony industry has ushered in a new start, adding that it's a good opportunity for insiders to gather together in the beautiful spring to discuss industry plans and embark on a new journey.

Then, Mr. Jianjun Gong, the Deputy General Manager from Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star Co. Ltd., delivered an opening address. Mr. Gong extended a warm welcome to all the guests and friends attending the forum, expressed his sincere gratitude to friends from all walks of life who had long cared for the development of the company he stayed in and at the same time, showed his appreciation to Asian Metal for holding this grand event, mentioning that it provided everyone with the opportunity to showcase their own styles and communicate fully. According to Mr. Gong, the world today is undergoing profound changes, and the international environment for trade and investment is also facing many uncertainties and challenges; insiders in the antimony industry must have foresight and wisdom to actively adapt to changes in market demand, continuously upgrade technologies and management, step up cooperation, exchange and common development, so as to make greater contributions to achieving industrial prosperity and sustainable development. As one of largest antimony product producers worldwide, Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star has adhered to the business philosophy of "quality first, integrity first, and continuous innovation" for a long period of time, and is committed to providing customers with high-quality and efficient products and services. For many years, the company has always maintained a good market reputation and brand image and won the trust and support of its customers. In the future, the company will continue to strengthen cooperation with all friends, provide better quality products and more efficient services for them to repay their kindness.

As an important subsidiary of a Fortune Global 500 company China Minmetals, Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star Co., Ltd. is a large state-owned antimony-gold company integrating mining, beneficiation, smelting and scientific research and owns annual production capacities of 600,000t of antimony ores, 30,000t of antimony ingot, 40,000t of antimony products and 5t of gold. Occupying 30% and 25% of market shares for antimony products nationwide and worldwide respectively, the company usually sells its antimony products to over 50 countries and regions including Japan, USA, Europe and has already become a major antimony miner, a key producer and supplier for antimony products in the world as well as an important R&D and export base for antimony products in China.

Next, speeches started to be given formally in the forum. Firstly, Mr. Jun Liu, the General Manager from Hunan Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star Import and Export Co. Ltd. gave a wonderful speech named Moving Forward with Insight and Confidence in 2023, sharing five topics about striving for excellence, sticking to quality, innovation-driven technology strategy, responsibilities in hardships and practical actions for future development of China Minmetals and Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star. Mr. Liu noted that China Minmetals is an important state-owned enterprise directly managed by the central government with metal minerals as its core business. As a pilot company invested by state-owned capital, China Minmetals owns abundant reserves of metal mineral resources, with a total of 38 domestic and foreign mines in Asia, Oceania, South America and Africa, including 15 overseas mines. Mr. Liu stated that China Minmetals now sees Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star as a strong guarantee for national antimony resources, which aims to ensure that the value of antimony is fully recognized, ensure the healthy and sustainable development of the upstream, midstream, and downstream industries of antimony, ensure that the enterprise itself has status and its employees have both dignity and bright future and ensure sufficient strategic reserves of antimony resources in China. According to him, Hsikwangshan Twinkling Star has improved the quality of antimony ingot via the lead, arsenic and selenium removal technology for the refining of crude antimony, which is a technical revolution in the antimony smelting history and has boosted the quality reform of antimony ingot in China; the new technology of producing antimony trioxide by the leaching liquid top-blown antimony white furnace independently developed by the company in 2003 makes China realize the upgrading of antimony trioxide production technology; insisting on an innovation-driven technology strategy, the company owns the independent R&D technology for the whole industrial chain of Oxygen-rich Volatilization Smelting--Reduction Smelting and Refining in Reverberatory Furnace--Deep Processing of Antimony Products--Comprehensive Recovery of Antimony and Gold; the company takes the lead in developing the low concentration sulfur dioxide flue gas pneumatic emulsification desulfurization technology for antimony smelting and key technologies for comprehensive utilization of arsenic-alkali slag in antimony smelting to solve key problems within this industry; faced with the prominent environmental pollution problem of arsenic-alkali slag worldwide, the company, in collaboration with Central South University and other universities, achieves effective utilization of arsenic-alkali slag and produces arsenic metal by adopting wet-process. He further added that development of photovoltaic industry is expected to drive explosive growth for the demand of antimony, and the development of antimony battery materials will stimulate antimony to be applied widely in the field of lithium/sodium new energy-storage materials.

Afterwards, Mr. Fangwei Lv, the General Manager from Dongguan Jiefu Flame Retardant Materials Co., Ltd., delivered an excellent lecture named Outlook on Antimony Supply/Demand and Market Development in 2023. Mr. Lv firstly introduced the development status as well as management and business of the company, mentioning that the company's annual purchase volume for antimony concentrate and antimony oxide powder reaches over 8,000t currently and that for antimony ingot reaches more than 10,000t. The company's products include Jiefu brand ® antimony ingot, antimony trioxide and flame retardant masterbatch with annual sales of approximately 20,000t. Mr. Lv then reviewed and analyzed the price trend in the domestic antimony market from January 2018 to January 2023 and from January 2022 to February 2023 in detail, discussing factors that influenced the fluctuation of prices. He also analyzed the supply/demand status quo and development trend in the antimony market, noting that both the mining volume and supply of antimony concentrate and other antimony raw materials showed a notably decreasing trend in China and overseas countries in the recent three years owing to environmental protection policies, Russia-Ukraine conflict, decreased grade of raw ores, slow renewal processing for mining licenses and other factors while the demand for antimony from solar photovoltaic glass industry grew rapidly from 11% in 2020 to 17% in 2022 and is expected to culminate within three years. According to him, the flame-retardant industry saw exorbitant costs as a result of high antimony prices, and the demand for antimony from flame-retardant industry declined gradually from 60% in 2020 to 55% in 2022 after flame-retardant plants mildly adjusted their formulas. Next, Mr. Lv talked about the demand and development trend of antimony concentrated masterbatch in China and finally analyzed the market outlook of antimony from four aspects in detail, forecasting that antimony prices would fluctuate at RMB78,000-88,000/t (USD10,770-12,151/t) in 2023.

Next, Mr. Dongfei Wang from Lengshuijiang Antimony Product Industry Association spoke on the subject of the Status Quo and Prospective of Private Companies in Hsikwangshan area. Mr. Wang introduced the operation of the association as well as the operating rates, stocks and raw materials of antimony private companies, environmental protection policies and the integration of mines. He pointed out that private companies in Hsikwangshan area have a total smelting capacity of 50,000tpy and the antimony ingot produced there has a good reputation in the world, but the operating rate is insufficient at present overall. He then specifically analyzed the operating rates of mines from six aspects. Mr. Wang is pessimistic about stocks in the future, mentioning that stocks for both raw material and antimony products held by producers are less than 4,000t at the moment and those held by private companies in Lengshuijiang decline by about 77.77% YoY. As for the current raw material supply, Mr. Wang noted that the total raw material of mines in the world declined sharply from 2018 to 2022, adding that China's antimony concentrate imports decreased year by year during these years and touched the lowest level in the approximately ten years in 2022. He also discussed the price trend of antimony ingot in the past seven years. As for demand in the downstream market, he noted that China just starts revival in 2023 and the development of China's economy is full of hope in the future as long as China moves forwards and faces challenges bravely with hard work, adding that the sluggish demand hinders the supply shortage in the domestic market at present. According to him, the development of PV industry shored up antimony prices in 2022 and will continue to do this in 2023, when the demand of antimony will show explosive growth. He compared the development of antimony under the stimulus of strong demand from PV industry as the cobalt and lithium under the stimulus of demand from new energy vehicle industry. Mr. Wang expects that the demand for antimony from traditional flame-retardant and alloy areas would be limited in China in 2023 and that from polyester and catalyst areas would grow steadily, thinking that the largest growth of demand would come from the PV area. He also predicts that the antimony prices would stand at a high level in the first half of 2023 and break RMB90,000/t (USD12,427/t) and create a new high of the recent ten years in the second of the year.

Then, Mr. Guiqiu Tang, the Chairman of the Board of Nandan Zhenghua Metals Corp., Ltd., reported on New Lead-Antimony Smelting Process—Oxygen-enriched Side-Blown Bath Smelting. Mr. Tang introduced the lead-antimony smelting process, the oxygen-enriched bath smelting process and their supporting production lines. The predecessor of Nandan Zhenghua Metals Corp., Ltd. is Nandan Zhenghua Smelter founded in 2000 with a history of more than 20 years. At the beginning of its establishment, the company was small in scale, low in output, limited in output value, and few in personnel. For the survival and development, the company has experienced many difficulties and encountered lots of challenges, but it has never been discouraged. Relying on its own efforts and the support of the colleagues, it continuously invested and introduced new equipment, new processes and new technologies to upgrade in accordance with industrial policy requirements. The total construction area of its plant has reached 180 mu (about 120,000 square meters) so far, with the total fixed assets of RMB480 million (USD66.27 million). The company has the designed annual production capacities of 10,000 tons of antimony ingot, 10,000 tons of antimony trioxide, 10,000 tons of lead ingot and 50,000 tons of sulfuric acid, with the comprehensive recovery of 5,000 tons of zinc concentrate and 200 tons of gold, silver, copper and bismuth, including 60 tons of silver. It needs to purchase 100,000 tons of lead-antimony concentrate and antimony-bearing materials per year. After two years of research and development, the company has overcome the production process of "oxygen-enriched bath smelting technology for jamesonite" and "cryogenic air separation + oxygen-enriched bath smelting + acid production by two transformations and two absorptions on flue gas". Its oxygen-enriched bath smelting process has following characteristics: 1, oxygen-enriched smelting and oxidation, and acid production from flue gas; 2, higher waste residue treatment capacity and higher lead-antimony recovery rate; 3, high heat utilization rate of liquid slag; 4, owning the ability to increase efficiency and ensure safety and environmental protection. Mr. Tang finally shared the lead-antimony concentrate oxygen-enriched bath smelting process flow, the lead-antimony metal comprehensive recovery process flow and the waste water treatment process flow.

Then Mr. Naibin Zhang, the Chairman of Star-Better （Beijing）Chemical Materials Co., Ltd. delivered a speech named the Analysis on Application of Antimony in Flame Retardant Field. Mr, Zhang firstly introduced the development history, layout and products of Star-Better Chem as well as application fields of end products. He then elaborated in detail the definition of flame retardants and the essence and process of polymer material combustion, noting that the flame retardant effect of flame retardants is to prevent or suppress the rate of physical or chemical changes during the combustion process of polymer materials. Afterwards, Mr. Zhang shared with us types, characteristics as well as testing standards and methods for flame retardants. According to him, the scale of the global flame retardant market has maintained a growth trend year by year. Statistics indicated that the size of the global flame retardant market in 2020 was USD7.19 billion, but is expected to reach USD9.3 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of about 3.74%. From the perspective of the segmented product structure of the global flame retardant market, the aluminum hydroxide system, brominated system, and phosphorus system flame retardants are still the main products. According to statistics, the global market structure of flame retardants in 2020 was as follows: aluminum hydroxide (33.3%), brominated system (21.0%), phosphorus system (19.0%), nitrogen system (7.2%), antimony trioxide (7.7%), and other flame retardants (11.8%). The global consumption of flame retardants is increasing year by year. According to statistics, the global demand for flame retardants in 2020 was 2.904 million tons. It is expected that the global demand for flame retardants would reach 3.59 million tons in 2027, with an annual growth rate of about 3.08%. The United States and Europe developed early in the flame retardant consumer market, with rapid market development around the 1990s. However, since 2005, the focus of the flame retardant consumer market has gradually shifted to Asia. Although the flame retardant industry in Asia developed relatively late, the Asian market represented by China experienced the rapidest growth from 2005 to 2012.

The forum continued at 2:00 pm with Daisuke Honma, the President from Nihon Seiko (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. giving a speech on Analysis of Market Demand for Antimony Trioxide in Japan. He firstly introduced the history and status quo for the development of the company. The company was established in 1935 and its net sales reached 170.98 billion yen (consolidated) in FY2022, including 8.195 billion yen for antimony business. The company's major products include antimony metal, antimony trioxide, sodium antimonite, antimony trisulfide/pentasulfide and so on. In Japan, antimony trioxide is mainly used in flame-retardant additive, pigment, glass and other areas and the application proportion in the flame-retardant additive area reaches about 83%. Japan mainly imports antimony ingot from China, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea and other countries with the import volume of about 5,200t, 2,400t, 1,600t, 600t and 600t from the above countries respectively in 2022. Meanwhile, its imports for antimony trioxide stood at around 4,400t, including about 3,600t from China with the rest imports from Thailand, Belgium, Burma, South Korea and other countries. According to Mr. Daisuke Honma, Japan's demand for antimony trioxide stood at about 8,615t in 2022, rising by about 23.14% from 6,996 in 2021; the country's annual demand for the material hovered at 8,000-11,000t in the past ten years. He finally noted that Japan's demand for antimony trioxide increases year by year and the annual demand is expected to rise to 120,000t or so by 2050, adding that most end users of antimony trioxide come from the electric vehicle field, the fuel cell vehicle field and the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle field and those from the mild plug-in hybrid electric vehicle field and the fuel vehicle field will decline gradually.

Afterwards, Mr. Zheng Chen, the Executive Deputy Director and Senior Engineer from Urban Mineral Research Center of Lanzhou Engineering & Research Institute of Nonferrous Metallurgy Co., Ltd. gave a speech named Test and Application Outlook of Top-blown Bath Smelting Furnace in Antimony Industry. Lanzhou Engineering & Research Institute of Nonferrous Metallurgy Co., Ltd., formerly known as the Northwest Nonferrous Metallurgical Design and Research Institute of the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, was established in 1958 and is one of the eight major metallurgical design institutes in the nonferrous metal industry in China. It was once affiliated to the Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, China Nonferrous Metals Industry Corporation and National Nonferrous Metals Industry Bureau. In 2001, the company joined China Geological Engineering Corporation and then was integrated into China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Group in 2010. It is a comprehensive Grade A design institute with cross-industry, cross-regional, multi-level and all-round engineering construction services. Mr. Chen's speech includes five parts, namely the antimony industry production status, introduction on bath smelting furnaces, test for antimony smelting by bath smelting furnaces, antimony-arsenic separation test and application prospect. According to him, in China, antimony smelting or production concentrates in Hsikwangshan, where the most smelters adopt the blast furnace-reverberatory furnace volatilization smelting process; in the blast furnace, antimony is oxidized into Sb2O3 and enters the flue gas; after cooling and dust collection, Sb2O3 is sent to the reverberatory furnace for reduction and refining. However, due to disadvantages of blast furnace process such as high energy consumption, low heat utilization rate and high labor intensity, professors mentioned bath smelting process. Mr. Chen then analyzed both advantages and disadvantages of oxygen bottom-blown furnaces, oxygen side-blown direct smelting furnaces (Vaniukov furnaces), Jinchuan's self-heating smelting furnaces and the top-blown bath smelting furnaces and introduced the test results for antimony smelting process by bath smelting furnaces, noting that the antimony recovery rate reaches 98% with less than 0.5% of antimony in slag and more than 78% of antimony oxide powder content when dealing with antimony sulfide ore and the antimony and lead recovery rate reached 96% and 97% respectively with antimony content of 1.0% and lead content of 0.5% in slag when dealing with lead-antimony concentrate. Mr. Chen finally introduced the antimony-arsenic separation test, which uses high-arsenic antimony ingot produced in Xinshao, Chenzhou without adding any chemical reagents, and produces qualified 2# antimony ingot and arsenic alloy ingot with the help of the difference in physical properties of antimony and arsenic. Under the conditions of temperature 950°C, pressure 300-500 Pa, and constant temperature for 1 hour, the following results are obtained: antimony ingot includes 99.72% of antimony, 0.1% of arsenic and 0.12% of lead; arsenic alloy includes 8.35% of antimony, 80.21% of arsenic and 10.02% of lead.

Then, Mr. James Earle, the CEO from Nagambie Resources Limited, made a speech named Australia's Next High-Grade Antimony & Gold Producer. He firstly made a brief introduction to Nagambie Resources and its projects. Nagambie Resources Limited is an exploration and development company targeting epizonal high-grade antimony-gold mineralisation across 3,200 sqkm of tenements in the Waranga Domain of the Melbourne Structural Zone, Victoria, Australia, aiming to be the first-choice sustainable supplier of antimony-gold concentrate to downstream processing partners around the world. The company discovered the nationally significant antimony-gold resources at its 100% owned Nagambie mine and identified the first two Costerfield-like high-grade antimony vein systems containing 22 "waste-diluted” mineable stopes averaging 16.3 g/t Au Eq (6.1% antimony (Sb) plus 4.8 g/t gold (Au)) at depths of <250m. Geological model predicts the existence of multiple additional high-grade antimony-gold vein systems over a prospective length of around 3.0 km, and depths of 1,000m or more. He then introduced geosciences characteristics of Australia. According to him, more than 20 Australian deposits are known to contain antimony but mostly at subeconomic grades; the bulk of Australia’s Economic Demonstrated Resources (EDR) of antimony occur at the Costerfield gold deposit in Victoria and at the Hillgrove deposit in New South Wales; companies have also reported economic resources in Western Australia at the Spec deposits and at Eastern Hills.

After the tea break, Mr. Wenhai Fu, the General Manager from Hunan Srite Mining Co., Ltd., reported on the Analysis of Global Antimony Resources. Srite is committed to the import/export and investment related to metal minerals, metal smelting, metal deep-processing and new energy battery fields as well as new products, new technologies, new material fields. Mr. Fu noted that global antimony resources are distributed in the Pacific Rim, Mediterranean, Central Asian Tianshan Mineral Belt, Russia, Bolivia, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and other areas. Mr. Fu mainly introduced the reserves and grades of antimony resources of antimony mines in Kriala, Surmai, Gunga, Dhungei and others in Pakistan as well as the status quo of antimony ore resources in Afghanistan, including those in Salahuddin, Gardez, Baghran, Uruzgan and other regions. According to him, Pakistan is rich in antimony mineral resources, but a lot of political, security, law, and infrastructure challenges will be suffered to conduct mining and investment there; Afghanistan also has abundant antimony resources, which haven't been developed fully yet, so the Taliban government in Afghanistan calls on large companies from around the world to develop mineral resources there. Finally, Mr. Fu pointed out that the global antimony industry is faced with problems such as uneven distribution, weak demand and low production capacity as well as opportunities brought during improving resource utilization rates and recovery rates, and strengthening the exploration and utilization of overseas resources.

Finally, Ms. Ni Li, the General Manager from Hangzhou Zhengda Antimony Product Co., Ltd., a comprehensive company in the beautiful city of Hangzhou integrating R&D, consigned processing and marketing, made a report on the Analysis on Antimony Consumption Fields and Status Quo of Antimony Market. Ms. Li firstly analyzed demand and consumption in the current antimony market, noting that antimony is called the industrial monosodium glutamate. According to her, antimony compounds and antimony-bearing metals are used to produce flame-retardants, glass clarifier, catalyst, ammunition, accumulator grid and other products and could be applied in medicine, glass-ceramics, chemical, flame-retardant, war industry, semi-conductor and other areas. Ms. Li then gave a brief introduction to the status quo and outlook of antimony market. According to her, China is a major producer of antimony, but its output proportion of antimony decreased from 84% in 2011 to 55% in 2021. The supply of antimony was influenced by depleted resources and restrictions in mining; however, the strategic position of antimony is still prominent now owing to tight supply and difficulties in replacement and recycling. The global antimony ore output was 112,000t in 2021 and the global market changed from oversupply of 26,000t to supply shortage of 16,000t from 2019 to 2021 due to the output reduction in China, which also caused sharp increase of prices during the period. The gap between supply and demand is expected to widen further in China's antimony market in 2023 against the backdrops of further increase of demand from PV area and stability of demand from flame-retardant area; the demand of antimony from lead-acid battery area is expected to decline amid stability owing to the increase of antimony prices and the decrease of both lithium prices and costs of sodium ion, but the domestic antimony market will probably continue to see the supply shortage of 8,000-10,000t in 2024 and 2025. As for the application of antimony in semi-conductor, perovskite and liquid battery areas, Ms. Li pointed out that antimonide semiconductor has the characteristics of high electron mobility, strong conductivity, ultra-low power consumption, and occupies the core position in the fourth generation semiconductor materials. She further stated that antimony could be applied in liquid battery area, adding that Ambri, an Indian antimony battery producer, has gained investment of Bill Gates and the company claimed that antimony batteries surpass lithium batteries in terms of economy, safety, and endurance mileage. Ms. Li finally expected that antimony prices would create a new high in history as the gap between demand and supply widens further.

Then it came the highly anticipated reciprocal banquet at 6:00 pm. At the beginning of the banquet, Jinguang Jiang, the General Manager from Taojiang Jiutong Antimony Co., Ltd., delivered an address. Mr. Jiang firstly congratulated Asian Metal on the successful holding of the forum, expressed his appreciation to Asian Metal for its meticulous arrangement about the forum and also showed his warm welcome to all attendees. Approximately 150 attendees attended the banquet, where distinguished guests toasted the achievement happily and enjoyed the sweet songs and graceful dances with the characteristics of Hainan arranged by Asian Metal. The 9th Antimony Forum came to a successful conclusion in the happy ambience. This is indeed a successful forum, which got the unanimous praise of attendees, talked the latest development trend and direction of the antimony industry, gave valuable suggestions and brand new industrial knowledge, introduced upstream and downstream resources both at home and abroad and provided a wonderful platform for suppliers and buyers to communicate. We believe that all attendees will get new ideas about development, seize new opportunities and explore unknown future via sufficient communication and deep summarization about the past experiences. We believe that this forum will definitely gather more consensuses for the prosperity and development of the antimony industry, strengthen industry cohesion, and contribute more wisdom to the healthy development of the antimony industry. Let us look forward to meet again in the 10th Antimony Forum next year when many foreign and domestic clients will attend.

Some photos taken during the forum