Antimony Explained: Sources, Uses, Solar Glass, Chips and Export Controls

Antimony (Sb, element 51) is a brittle metalloid mined mainly from the sulphide mineral stibnite. USGS estimates world mine output at about 110,000 tonnes in 2025, led by China, Russia and Tajikistan, and much of the world's ore is smelted in China. It ends up in flame retardants for plastics and electronics, lead acid battery alloys, glass, ammunition and infrared semiconductors. Since 2024 its exports from China need a licence.

That is the short answer. The longer one matters to anyone who designs or buys hardware, because antimony sits quietly inside the plastic housing of a server, the backup battery in a data centre, the glass on a solar module and the detector in a thermal camera. The 2024 export controls and the price spike that followed showed how quickly a minor metal can turn into a sourcing problem. This post goes one level deeper than our rare earth elements explainer, which covers the wider critical minerals picture, and our post on how NdFeB magnets are made.

Figures come from the issuing authorities: the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Federal Register, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), the White House and the EU Official Journal. Each carries its source and year.

Key takeaways

• One mineral, a few countries. Stibnite (Sb2S3) is the main ore. USGS estimates 2025 mine output at 110,000 tonnes: China about 40,000, Russia about 32,000 and Tajikistan about 22,000 (USGS MCS 2026).
• Smelting is more concentrated than mining. USGS has long noted that much of the antimony mined outside China is shipped to China for smelting. China supplied 66% of U.S. antimony oxide imports in 2021 to 2024 (USGS MCS 2026).
• Flame retardants and lead alloys dominate demand. In the United States, USGS reports flame retardants at 49%, antimonial lead and ammunition at 40% and nonmetal products such as ceramics, glass and rubber at 11% of use in 2025 (USGS MCS 2026).
• Controls arrived in two steps and are now partly paused. China required export licences for antimony items from August 2024. MOFCOM Announcement No. 46 of 2024 (3 December 2024) said licences for antimony exports to the United States would in principle not be granted. MOFCOM Announcement No. 72 of 2025 suspended that clause from 9 November 2025 until 27 November 2026. The licensing requirement itself remains.
• Prices more than doubled. USGS puts the average U.S. antimony metal price at $10.24 per pound in 2024 and $25 per pound in 2025 (USGS MCS 2026).
• It is on the critical lists. Antimony is on the USGS 2022 and 2025 lists and on Annex II (critical) of the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, but not on Annex I (strategic).
• Recycling covers little. Mostly battery antimonial lead, it supplied about 12% of U.S. apparent consumption in 2025 (USGS MCS 2026).
• Safeguard's role is indirect. It does not analyse materials, chips or hardware; it covers the software around them.

What is antimony?

Antimony has the symbol Sb, from its Latin name stibium, and atomic number 51. It sits in group 15 of the periodic table, below arsenic and above bismuth. It is classed as a metalloid: it looks like a metal, silvery and lustrous, but it is brittle and conducts heat and electricity poorly.

The USGS Professional Paper on U.S. critical mineral resources (Seal and others, 2017) gives the basics: specific gravity 6.68, melting point 630.5 °C, too brittle to use alone, but alloyed with lead or tin it adds strength, hardness and corrosion resistance.

It is scarce: the same paper puts it at about 0.2 parts per million in Earth's crust, comparable to some heavy rare earth elements, and it rarely occurs as native metal because it bonds strongly with sulphur.

What is stibnite?

Stibnite is antimony trisulphide, Sb2S3, a grey mineral that often forms long, striated, needle like crystals. USGS calls it the most common antimony ore mineral, although more than 100 other minerals contain antimony. People have used it for a very long time: the USGS paper notes that ancient Egyptians and early Hindus used stibnite to make black eye cosmetics as early as about 3100 BC.

Where does antimony ore form?

USGS describes all producing antimony deposits as hydrothermal: they formed where hot fluids moved through fractured rock and deposited minerals as they cooled. Two broad deposit types matter commercially:

• Simple quartz stibnite veins, where stibnite is the main ore mineral with quartz and minor other sulphides. Mines in these deposits produce antimony as the primary product.
• Complex polymetallic deposits, where antimony occurs with gold, silver, lead, zinc, tungsten or mercury. Here antimony is often a by-product, and its presence can make gold harder and more expensive to recover. The USGS paper notes that antimony in gold ore interferes with heap leaching by consuming the leaching agent.

That is why some new antimony projects are really gold projects, and why antimony supply responds slowly to its own price.

Where is antimony mined?

The table below shows USGS estimates of mine production and reserves. The 2026 edition significantly revised 2024 production for China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, so we show the current figures and note the earlier ones afterwards.

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Antimony (February 2026). Smaller producers (Guatemala, Iran, Laos, Pakistan, Vietnam) are omitted. Antimony content, metric tonnes. The U.S. reserve figure is company reported probable reserves for the Stibnite Gold Project in Idaho.

Three things stand out.

First, mining is spread wider than headlines suggest. On the 2026 figures, China mined about 36% of the 2025 total, Russia about 29% and Tajikistan about 20% (our arithmetic on the USGS table).

Second, the figures moved a lot between editions. The 2025 edition of the USGS summary (January 2025) put China's 2024 output at 60,000 tonnes out of a world total of 100,000, which is 60%. The 2026 edition revised China's 2024 figure down to 40,000 and the world total up to 119,000. Estimates for countries that publish little data get revised; if you quote a share, quote the edition.

Third, mining is not processing. The USGS Professional Paper states that the great majority of the world's antimony comes from China and that much of the remainder is shipped to China for smelting. That is why import data, not mine data, is the better guide to dependency.

What does the United States produce?

USGS reports that no marketable antimony was mined in the United States in 2024; one Montana company made primary metal and oxide from imported feedstock (USGS MCS 2025). In 2025, USGS reports that one domestic company began mining antimony in Montana, and that in November another company announced that mining had started at the Stibnite Hill Mine in Montana (USGS MCS 2026). U.S. primary smelter output was an estimated 700 tonnes in 2025.

Secondary production, mostly antimonial lead recovered from spent lead acid batteries, was about 3,500 tonnes in 2025, worth an estimated $190 million (USGS MCS 2026).

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Antimony, salient statistics. The price series is for metal of at least 99.65% antimony, cost, insurance and freight, from Argus Media as cited by USGS.

Apparent consumption jumped by more than half between 2024 and 2025, driven by oxide imports. USGS does not explain the jump; stockpiling ahead of further restrictions is one possible reading, ours, not a USGS finding.

Where do U.S. imports come from?

USGS lists import sources for 2021 to 2024 (USGS MCS 2026):

Oxide is the form most hardware supply chains care about, because antimony trioxide is the flame retardant synergist. Two thirds of it came from China.

What is antimony used for?

USGS reports U.S. end uses each year. The two most recent editions group them slightly differently, so both are shown.

The 2026 summary's sentence reads "metal products, including flame retardants, 49%; antimonial lead and ammunition, 40%". We read 49% as the flame retardant share because flame retardants are a chemical use, not a metal product, and the 2025 edition lists them separately. Check the next edition if the distinction matters to you.

Flame retardants: antimony trioxide as a synergist

Most antimony consumed in the United States goes into flame retardants, as antimony trioxide (Sb2O3). The USGS Professional Paper describes its use in adhesives, paints, papers, plastics and sealants, and as a fire retardant backing on rubber and textile upholstery, typically together with bromine or chlorine based halogenated compounds. It names electronics, plastics and fabrics among the major markets.

The pairing is the point. Antimony trioxide on its own is a weak flame retardant. Combined with a halogenated flame retardant, it forms antimony halide species in a fire that interrupt the gas phase chemistry of combustion. The USGS paper explains the same mechanism for antimony trichloride, used on tents and vehicle covers in the Second World War: in a fire, antimony and chlorine form unstable compounds that remove oxygen and smother the flames. That synergy is why the trade calls antimony trioxide a synergist rather than a flame retardant in its own right.

In hardware this means enclosures for servers, network gear and power supplies, cable jacketing, connector bodies, relays and some laminates and encapsulants. Many manufacturers have moved some products to halogen free flame retardant systems, which generally do not use antimony trioxide. So the presence of antimony in a specific part depends on that part's formulation, not on the product category. Only a materials declaration from the supplier tells you.

Lead acid batteries and antimonial lead

The USGS paper states that lead acid storage batteries of the kind used in cars contain 4% to 6% antimony alloyed with lead, and that lead acid batteries account for more than two thirds of the use of metallurgical antimony, much of it from scrap. Antimony hardens the lead grids and improves their castability and cycling behaviour.

For data centres and telecom sites, the relevant products are the valve regulated lead acid batteries in uninterruptible power supplies and DC plants. Many modern designs use lead calcium alloys instead of lead antimony for lower maintenance and less water loss, so again the exposure depends on the specific product. USGS lists calcium, copper, selenium, sulphur and tin combinations as substitutes for antimony in battery alloys.

Antimonial lead is also where most recycling happens. USGS notes that the bulk of secondary antimony is recovered at secondary lead smelters as antimonial lead, generated by and consumed by the lead acid battery industry. That loop is efficient, but it is closed: it mostly feeds new batteries, not flame retardants.

Ammunition and defence uses

The USGS paper says the U.S. government has considered antimony critical mainly because of its military uses. Antimony sulphide is a combustion supporting ingredient in ammunition primers, detonators, smoke generators and tracer rounds, and antimony hardens lead in bullets and shot. A 1939 analysis quoted by USGS said antimony had "more uses of a direct military character" than other strategic minerals of its group. That defence demand is the main reason governments fund domestic supply, as covered below.

Glass, including solar glass

Antimony compounds are used in glassmaking. The USGS paper notes that sodium antimonate is used for removing bubbles from glass, a step glassmakers call fining. During melting, gas bubbles are trapped in the viscous melt; a fining agent releases oxygen at high temperature, which helps small bubbles grow and rise out, and then reabsorbs oxygen as the glass cools.

Solar module cover glass needs very high light transmission and few defects, and some makers of patterned solar glass have used antimony compounds as the fining agent. We could not find a primary source in the USGS, EU or IEA documents we fetched that quantifies how much antimony goes into solar glass or which share of solar glass production uses it, so we do not give a figure. Treat solar glass as a known use of uncertain size. For a module maker, the exposure question is the same as for plastics: ask the glass supplier what fining agent the specific product uses. Antimony free fining routes exist, and producers have reasons to prefer them, including easier recycling of the glass.

PET plastic catalyst

Antimony compounds, most often antimony trioxide or antimony triacetate, are widely used as polycondensation catalysts in making polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the plastic in drinks bottles and polyester fibre. Small residual amounts remain in the polymer. USGS does not break this use out in its summary table, and we could not confirm a current share from the primary sources we fetched, so we list it as a use without a figure. Titanium and germanium based catalysts are the usual alternatives.

Semiconductors: InSb detectors and antimony as a dopant

This is the smallest use by tonnage and one of the hardest to replace.

Indium antimonide (InSb) is a compound semiconductor with a narrow band gap. That makes it sensitive to mid wave infrared light, roughly the 3 to 5 micrometre band, which is why InSb focal plane arrays appear in cooled thermal imaging cameras, missile seekers, astronomy instruments and some gas sensing equipment. China's August 2024 controls named indium antimonides explicitly, according to USGS, which signals that the control list was written with these uses in mind.

Antimony as an n type dopant. Antimony has five valence electrons, one more than silicon. Add a small, controlled amount to a silicon crystal and each antimony atom donates a free electron, making the silicon n type. Antimony diffuses slowly in silicon compared with phosphorus, which makes it useful for heavily doped substrates and buried layers that must stay put during later high temperature steps. The USGS paper notes that very high purity antimony metal, 99.999% or better, is used by the semiconductor industry in silicon wafers for infrared detectors, diodes and other devices.

The tonnage for semiconductors is tiny compared with flame retardants, so a price spike hits it less in cost terms. The risk is qualification: a detector line or a doping process is qualified around a specific high purity source, and changing source means requalifying.

How is antimony refined from ore to oxide and metal?

The route depends on ore grade and the minerals that come with the stibnite. The steps below describe the common routes in general terms; individual plants vary, and we have not found a single primary source that documents global plant level practice.

Two points matter for supply risk.

First, the hard part is not mining. The USGS paper notes that stibnite may contain arsenic and mercury, and removing them cleanly takes specialised smelting and environmental controls that are slow to replicate.

Second, flame retardant grade oxide is a specification: compounders qualify it on particle size, whiteness and impurities, so a new oxide plant must win those qualifications before it replaces imports.

What export controls did China impose?

This section uses the issuing authorities' texts where we could retrieve them, and USGS summaries where we could not. Where a later measure changed an earlier one, both are shown.

Timeline

The August 2024 licensing requirement

USGS reports that in August 2024 China's government announced that companies would need export licences to export antimony ore, metals, oxides, hydrides, indium antimonides, organo-antimony compounds and gold antimony separation technology (USGS MCS 2025). The measure was issued under China's Export Control Law by MOFCOM together with the General Administration of Customs. A licence requirement is not a ban: exporters apply, MOFCOM reviews the end user and end use, and approved shipments proceed, with extra time and paperwork. In practice, buyers outside China saw longer lead times and less certainty about volumes.

We could not retrieve the MOFCOM page for the August 2024 announcement while writing this post, so we have not reproduced its customs codes or the exact item thresholds. If you need them for classification, read the announcement on mofcom.gov.cn rather than a summary.

The December 2024 escalation

MOFCOM Announcement No. 46 of 2024, dated 3 December 2024 and effective on publication, has three operative parts according to its text:

1. It prohibits exports of dual use items to U.S. military users or for military uses.
2. It states that, in principle, licences will not be granted for exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials related dual use items to the United States, and applies stricter end user and end use review to graphite exports to the United States.
3. It warns that organisations and individuals in any country or region that transfer the relevant Chinese origin dual use items to U.S. organisations or individuals in violation of these provisions will be held legally responsible.

USGS summarises this as China banning all exports of antimony to the United States in December 2024. The third clause matters for anyone who buys through distributors in third countries: it reaches transfers, not only direct exports.

The November 2025 suspension

On 1 November 2025 a White House fact sheet stated that China would issue general licences valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite for the benefit of U.S. end users and their suppliers around the world, and described this as "the de facto removal of controls China imposed since 2023".

MOFCOM's own text is shorter and narrower. Announcement No. 72 of 2025, dated 9 November 2025, suspends clause 2 of Announcement No. 46 of 2024 from that date until 27 November 2026. It does not suspend clause 1, the ban on exports to U.S. military users and uses. It does not revoke the August 2024 licensing requirement. As of this post, the suspension has about a month left, and any extension or replacement will come as a new MOFCOM announcement.

What happened to prices?

USGS reports the price path in two editions:

For comparison, the 2020 average was $2.67 per pound (USGS MCS 2025). A price that rose roughly nine times over five years is a hardware cost issue for flame retardant compounds and battery alloys, even though antimony is a small share of the bill of materials for most finished electronics.

What U.S. supply projects and recycling exist?

Defense funding for domestic mining

USGS records two steps for an Idaho gold and antimony project, the Stibnite Gold Project:

• In February 2025, the company was conditionally awarded additional Department of Defense funding, bringing its total DoD funding to $59.4 million. The company reported total proven and probable reserves of 14.2 million tons of ore grading 0.42% antimony (USGS MCS 2025).
• In October 2025, the company broke ground on construction of the mine, and USGS reports it was conditionally awarded $80 million of funding from the U.S. Department of War to reestablish a domestic source of antimony (USGS MCS 2026).

USGS uses the project's company reported probable reserves, 60,000 tonnes of contained antimony, as the U.S. reserve figure.

We could not retrieve the Department of Defense press releases for these awards directly, so we cite the amounts as USGS reports them. If you need the award instrument, such as a Defense Production Act Title III agreement, read the department's own release.

Montana: smelting and new mining

In 2025 a domestic company began mining antimony in Montana, and in November another announced that mining had started at the Stibnite Hill Mine there (USGS MCS 2026). That is a start, but U.S. apparent consumption was an estimated 45,000 tonnes in 2025 against 700 tonnes of primary smelter output.

The National Defense Stockpile

The stockpile plan listed potential antimony acquisitions of 1,100 tonnes in fiscal year 2024 and 700 tonnes in fiscal year 2025 (USGS MCS 2025 and 2026); the fiscal year 2026 plan was not released. A stockpile buys time; it does not add processing capacity.

Recycling

Recycling supplied about 15% of U.S. apparent consumption in 2024 (USGS MCS 2025) and about 12% in 2025 (USGS MCS 2026). The share fell because consumption rose faster than battery scrap. Almost all of it is antimonial lead from batteries, returned to batteries.

Antimony in flame retardant plastics is much harder to recover. It is dispersed at a few percent by weight in mixed plastics, often alongside brominated compounds, and electronic waste plastics are frequently burned for energy or landfilled rather than separated. Antimony in glass and PET is similarly dilute. So recycling covers part of the battery loop and very little of the flame retardant loop.

Is antimony on the critical minerals lists?

Yes, on all the main ones, with one distinction in the EU.

What does critical but not strategic mean in the EU?

The Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks only for strategic raw materials: EU capacity for at least 10% of annual consumption from extraction, at least 40% from processing and at least 25% from recycling, and no more than 65% of annual consumption of any strategic raw material from a single third country, per the European Commission's summary of the Act. Strategic status also lets projects apply for Strategic Project designation, with faster permitting.

Because antimony is on Annex II, not Annex I, those benchmarks and the Strategic Project track do not apply to it directly. The lists are reviewed periodically, so check the current text.

Use, demand share and substitutes

The table combines USGS demand shares and substitutes with our own judgment of how hard substitution is. The difficulty column is a qualitative assessment, not a USGS finding.

Big tonnage uses have substitutes that cost money and time; small tonnage uses are the hardest to replace. Plan price and inventory for the first group, qualification and second sources for the second.

Step by step: map your antimony exposure

Hardware supply risk work is mostly data work. The steps below assume you have, or can request, a bill of materials and supplier materials declarations. The commands use standard tools (grep, awk and Python's standard library) on files you already hold; nothing here downloads or installs anything.

Step 1: list the parts that are likely to contain antimony

Start from your BOM export. Flag the part categories from the use table: plastic enclosures and moulded parts, cables and wire, connectors and relays, batteries, solar modules and glass, infrared sensors and cameras, and power semiconductors on heavily doped substrates.

# bom.csv columns: part_number,description,category,supplier,qty
awk -F, 'NR==1 || tolower($0) ~ /enclosure|housing|cable|wire|connector|relay|battery|ups|glass|solar|infrared|thermal|insb|bezel|moulded|molded/' bom.csv > bom-antimony-candidates.csv
wc -l bom-antimony-candidates.csv

This is a coarse filter. It over-includes on purpose; the declarations in step 2 decide.

Step 2: search materials declarations by substance and CAS number

Suppliers usually provide full or partial materials declarations, often as XML or spreadsheets in an industry declaration format, or as a substance list for regulatory compliance. Search them for antimony substances by name and CAS registry number. Common ones:

# declarations/ holds one XML or CSV declaration per supplier part
grep -ril -e "7440-36-0" -e "1309-64-4" -e "1312-41-0" -e "antimony" declarations/ \
  | sort > parts-declaring-antimony.txt
wc -l parts-declaring-antimony.txt

Verify CAS numbers against your chemical registry first; a typo silently misses parts.

Step 3: estimate mass per product

If declarations give substance mass per part, roll it up by product. A short Python script using only the standard library is enough:

# rollup.py: sum declared antimony mass per product
# inputs: bom.csv (product,part_number,qty) and sb_mass.csv (part_number,sb_mg)
import csv
from collections import defaultdict

sb = {r["part_number"]: float(r["sb_mg"]) for r in csv.DictReader(open("sb_mass.csv"))}
total = defaultdict(float)
for r in csv.DictReader(open("bom.csv")):
    total[r["product"]] += sb.get(r["part_number"], 0.0) * float(r["qty"])

for product, mg in sorted(total.items(), key=lambda x: -x[1]):
    print(f"{product}\t{mg/1000:.2f} g Sb")

Run it with python3 -I rollup.py. If a declaration gives antimony trioxide rather than antimony, convert by mass fraction: antimony is about 83.5% of Sb2O3 by mass (two atoms of about 121.76 against three of about 16.00).

Step 4: map each part to a supplier and a country of processing

For each part that declares antimony, ask the supplier which compound and grade, which producer made it and in which country it was processed. Push one tier further for the parts that matter most.

Step 5: map customs codes

USGS lists the U.S. tariff numbers for antimony forms, which helps trade and logistics teams track inbound material:

These codes matter for suppliers one or two tiers up and for companies that compound their own plastics.

Step 6: score and plan

Score each exposed part on three things: the share of your products that depend on it, whether an antimony free equivalent is already qualified, and how long requalification takes. Then decide per part: hold more inventory, qualify a second source, or start a redesign. Record the decision with a review date tied to 27 November 2026, when MOFCOM's suspension is due to end, and store the declaration evidence with the product's compliance records. Our post on the CISA HBOM framework covers how hardware bills of materials are structured, which is the natural home for this data.

The supply chain bridge: hardware BOMs and software BOMs

Materials risk lives in the hardware bill of materials and in materials declarations: which parts contain which substances, from which suppliers, processed where. Software risk lives in the software bill of materials: which open source components and versions the product's firmware, drivers and services contain. Different teams keep them, but they describe the same product, and the discipline is the same: inventory, provenance and a plan for when a supplier fails. Safeguard works only on the software side.

Common mistakes

Treating reserves as production. China's 830,000 tonnes of reserves and the world's more than 2,000,000 tonnes (USGS MCS 2026) say nothing about how much antimony can reach the market next year. Production was about 110,000 tonnes in 2025. Reserves need mines, mills and smelters, and permits for all three.

Quoting a production share without its edition. USGS revised China's 2024 mine output from 60,000 tonnes (MCS 2025) to 40,000 tonnes (MCS 2026). A share quoted from one edition can be very different in the next.

Equating mine share with dependency. Processing is more concentrated than mining. Check import data by form, especially oxide.

Assuming recycling covers demand. U.S. recycling supplied about 12% of apparent consumption in 2025 (USGS MCS 2026), almost all antimonial lead from batteries going back into batteries. It does little for flame retardants.

Confusing antimony with arsenic. They sit next to each other in group 15, often occur together in ores and are both on the critical lists, but they are different elements with different uses and hazards. A search for "As" in a declaration will not find antimony, whose symbol is Sb.

Reading "suspended" as "removed". MOFCOM's November 2025 suspension pauses one clause until 27 November 2026. The licensing requirement and the military end use ban remain.

FAQ

What is antimony used for in everyday products?

Mostly in flame retardants for plastics, textiles and electronics, as antimony trioxide paired with halogenated compounds, and in lead alloys for batteries and ammunition. Smaller amounts go into glass, ceramics, PET plastic production and semiconductors (USGS MCS 2026; USGS Professional Paper 1802).

Where does most antimony come from?

USGS estimates 2025 mine output at 110,000 tonnes, with China about 40,000, Russia about 32,000 and Tajikistan about 22,000 tonnes (USGS MCS 2026). Much ore mined elsewhere has historically been smelted in China.

Is antimony a critical mineral?

Yes. It is on the USGS 2022 list and the final 2025 list of critical minerals, and on Annex II of the EU Critical Raw Materials Act. It is not on the EU's Annex I list of strategic raw materials.

Did China ban antimony exports?

China required export licences for antimony items from August 2024. In December 2024, MOFCOM Announcement No. 46 said licences for antimony exports to the United States would in principle not be granted. MOFCOM Announcement No. 72 of 2025 suspended that clause until 27 November 2026; licensing and the ban on U.S. military end uses remain.

Why did antimony prices go up so much?

After China's August 2024 licensing and December 2024 U.S. ban, the U.S. metal price averaged $25 per pound in 2025, up from $10.24 in 2024 (USGS MCS 2026).

Why is antimony used in solar panels?

Antimony compounds can act as a fining agent that removes bubbles from glass (USGS Professional Paper 1802), and some solar cover glass makers have used them for that purpose. We could not find a primary source that quantifies the share of solar glass using antimony.

How is antimony used in semiconductors?

As indium antimonide in mid wave infrared detectors, and as an n type dopant in silicon, where its slow diffusion suits heavily doped substrates and buried layers. USGS notes that metal of 99.999% purity or better is used by the semiconductor industry.

Can antimony be recycled?

Yes, mainly from lead acid batteries as antimonial lead. Recycling supplied about 12% of U.S. apparent consumption in 2025 (USGS MCS 2026). Antimony in flame retardant plastics, glass and PET is dilute and rarely recovered.

Where Safeguard fits

Safeguard does not analyse materials, model mineral supply, assess hardware, scan firmware binaries or generate hardware bills of materials, and its models are single purpose security models, not science tools. Its fit is indirect: it scans the repositories, container images and SBOM files behind the software in these products, such as UPS controller firmware you build, a thermal camera's companion app or a battery fleet dashboard, for known vulnerable open source components, and can open fix pull requests when a fixed version exists (autonomous remediation is generally available and ships switched off).

A product that carries antimony in its housing also carries open source code in its firmware, drivers and services, and that code needs patching like any other software. The section below applies to the code and images you build, not to the minerals or the chips.

Fix it without waiting for upstream

Whatever the vulnerability, most of the risk sits in two gaps. The first is the time between a fix being published and that fix actually running in your production builds. The second, and worse, is the time before any fix exists at all, while a maintainer works out a patch and a release schedule. Waiting through both gaps is a habit, not a requirement. Safeguard gives teams three ways to close them.

1. Autonomous remediation: pull requests, not tickets

When a fixed version exists, Safeguard's Griffin models open a tested, policy gated pull request that moves the affected dependency to the safe version. You can run it on one repository or in bulk across every project that carries the vulnerable version. Remediation categories include dependencies, licenses, security posture and findings, and each one is set separately. Reachability analysis ranks the vulnerable code paths your application actually calls first, so the first pull requests you merge are the ones that matter most. Autonomous remediation ships switched off, with every category set to Manual, so your team decides how much runs on its own and what still needs a human approval.

2. Gold Open Source: the safe version in seconds, free

gold.safeguard.sh is free and needs no login. Search any CVE or package to see affected and fixed versions, CVSS, EPSS, CISA KEV status and a recommended safe version, or use the "Am I affected?" checker. The same data is available through a free read API, README status badges and RSS threat feeds.

3. Gold Registry: start from components that are already fixed

Gold Registry provides hardened, drop in replacements for upstream packages and container images. Every Gold artifact is held continuously to zero exploitable critical or high CVEs and a completed license check, with signed build provenance (signed with Safeguard's key and verifiable with cosign, SLSA Build Level 3 as the design target) and a public evidence page you can hand to an auditor. An artifact loses its Gold badge if it regresses. Teams can point their own package directory at the registry so hardened equivalents resolve without changing how developers install anything.

When upstream has no fix yet, or will not ship one, Safeguard first works to get the fix accepted upstream. If the issue is severe or upstream will not move, Safeguard builds a fork, fixes the vulnerability there and publishes a hardened Gold build, so you are not stuck on a maintainer's release schedule. You can also request a hardened, compatibility tested build of a specific package. Ask which packages it covers before you plan around it.

One honest limit: when the vulnerable code lives in a vendor appliance, a hosted service or an operating system runtime you do not build yourself, the fix still has to come from that vendor or distribution. The steps above apply to the open source dependencies and container images you build and ship, which is where most teams carry the largest and least tracked share of their exposure.

See how Safeguard would help

These demos show software workflows, not materials tracking. You can download Safeguard and follow the CLI docs to try them on your own projects.

This demo sets up the Safeguard runner on your own machine, approves it with its device code and scans from the terminal. Pointed at the container image your team uses to build firmware for a UPS controller or a thermal camera, the same scan lists the packages and versions inside and their known vulnerabilities.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

This demo is a real CLI session: asked to fix the lodash CVE in a repository, the assistant reads the finding and the advisory, asks before any command that changes something, moves lodash to 4.17.21, runs npm install and npm test with your approval, prints a summary and pushes nothing. The same flow applies to a vulnerable library in the web dashboard that manages a fleet of battery systems or solar inverters.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

This demo connects Claude to the Safeguard MCP server with OAuth and lets you choose which tools Claude can use. You can then ask which of your projects ship a given package version, such as a TLS or serial communication library shared by several device services, and get the answer from your own scan data.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

Quick check

Sources

• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Antimony (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025: Antimony (PDF)
• USGS Professional Paper 1802, Chapter C: Antimony (Seal and others, 2017) (PDF)
• Federal Register: 2022 Final List of Critical Minerals (govinfo)
• Federal Register: Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals (govinfo)
• MOFCOM Announcement No. 46 of 2024 on dual use exports to the United States (Chinese)
• MOFCOM Announcement No. 72 of 2025 suspending clause 2 of Announcement No. 46 (Chinese)
• Hong Kong Trade and Industry Department circular reproducing MOFCOM Announcement No. 46 of 2024 (PDF)
• Hong Kong Trade and Industry Department circular reproducing MOFCOM Announcement No. 72 of 2025 (PDF)
• The White House: Fact Sheet on the economic and trade deal with China, 1 November 2025
• Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, the Critical Raw Materials Act (EUR-Lex)
• European Commission: Critical raw materials
• European Commission: Critical Raw Materials Act overview
• PubChem: Antimony element page

Last reviewed: 25 October 2026. MOFCOM's suspension of the U.S. specific clause runs until 27 November 2026; check mofcom.gov.cn and the other linked authorities for later changes.