Locksley Resources cracks 99.5% purity antimony milestone from US mine

Locksley Resources has produced 99.5% antimony metal from its Desert Antimony mine in California, similar to the production-grade ingots pictured.

Locksley Resources (ASX: LKY) has successfully produced 99.5 per cent purity antimony trioxide from feedstock sourced at its Desert Antimony mine, part of the wider Mojave project in California.

The company says its industry-grade metal was achieved through ongoing metallurgical optimisation programs, marking a major step forward in its broader strategy to establish a secure, American-made supply chain for the critical mineral.

Locksley says this validation of a high-spec product opens the door to a complete mine-to-market production line on US soil, a capability largely absent as global supply becomes increasingly concentrated in foreign hands.

Although the high-purity product was created at bench scale, management says the result confirms that existing US-based refining pathways can be applied at Mojave, aligning directly with American government priorities to restore domestic processing.

The metallurgical program is focused on improving grade and recovery, whilst shaping processing routes for high-value industrial and defence products.

This achievement marks an important milestone for Locksley. Demonstrating that feedstock from the Desert Antimony Mine can be upgraded to 99.5% purity antimony trioxide validates the potential to produce high-value, refined, American-made antimony products from our Mojave Project.

Locksley Resources Managing Director and CEO Kerrie Matthews

Locksley recently kicked off its maiden diamond drilling campaign at the Desert Antimony mine, targeting depth extensions to the known high-grade antimony mineralisation beneath historical workings.

Core sampling and analysis will be used to confirm the 99.5 per cent metallurgical and processing testwork for presentation to the US Department of Energy Critical Minerals programs.

High-purity antimony trioxide is an essential input for a range of defence technologies, including munitions primers, military electronics and flame-retardant systems.

The company says achieving a purity level of 99.5 per cent meets a threshold for entry into these specialised markets and provides a pathway for product qualification with defence and strategic supply chain participants.

Locksley believes the principal barrier to a domestic supply is not the availability of ore, but the lack of US-based processing, a gap its integrated strategy is designed to address.

With the ability to produce high-purity antimony now demonstrated, the company is moving beyond just exploration and into the realms of downstream processing.

The company appears to be methodically piecing together a fully vertically integrated domestic solution for a material vital to America’s defence and industrial base, at a time when securing all things defence is at the absolute forefront of the global superpower’s focus.

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