Alaska company wins more than $43M to produce antimony compound

The Defense Department is awarding Alaska Range Resources (ARR) $43.4 million to extract, process and purify extracted stibnite to produce "military grade" antimony trisulfide, according to a DOD announcement published yesterday.

The Defense Production Act Title III award includes funds from the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022, the Pentagon said.

Antimony trisulfide is a compound consisting of sulfur and antimony -- the latter being one of three minerals with numerous military applications that the Chinese Commerce Ministry banned from export to the United States in December.

“Antimony metal and antimony trisulfide have critical applications in munitions, especially low and medium caliber, where it is used in primer production and case hardening,” Mike Cadenazzi, assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy, said.

China is the world’s leading producer of antimony, and accounts for 63% of U.S. antimony imports, according to a 2024 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The funding will support ARR’s efforts to complete environmental studies to finalize permitting, geological surveys and tests to enhance and target its drilling activities. It will also allow the company to start extracting stibnite, finish its metallurgical study and construct its concentration plant and refinery, DOD said.

“Establishing domestic sources for critical metals and minerals like antimony and its compounds enhances the long-term resilience of our supply chains,” Jeffrey Frankston, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial base resilience, said.

The department also noted in the announcement, made on the last day of fiscal year 2025, that the ARR award was the latest of 17 the DPA Purchases Office made in FY-25, totaling $856.2 million. Recipient cost shares during the same period came out to $88 million, DOD said.