In a maze of tunnels excavated in high mountains of Central Asia, minors are busy looking for antimony in Tayikistan, the second world producer of this critical metal whose global demand explodes. “We are doing drilling work to determine what are underground mineral resources,” summarizes Imankhassan Iorov, one of the 1,500 Employees of Tajike Talco Gold Company, which gave AFP a rare access to the Siritag (west) site.
Antigas in fifty kilometers of underground galleries, minor prospects to find gold, but above all, deeply hidden in rock, antimony. This silver gray metal with multiple properties is used for both energy transition, integrated in the batteries of electric vehicles or photovoltaic facilities, and by the armament industry, strengthening shields and ammunition.
From the mountains of Tayikistan and Kyrguistan to the steppes of Kazakhstan, including the deserts of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the entire region vibrates to the rhythm of the discoveries of metals and rare earths. In recent years, Russia, the European Union, the United States, of the Arab and Asian countries have embarked on huge central reserves to reduce their dependence on China, dominating the sector.
25% of world production
In Talco Gold, each team “alert 50 meters for geological exploration” to recover samples and “hollow 54 meters of tunnels” in noon, explains Kholmakhmad Khakimoda, in charge of the underground work of this deposit used jointly with Beijing, very established in the center of Asia. “Many antimony deposits are found in Tayikistan,” says Mourod Djoumazoda, director of Talco Gold, which weighs 10% of the global antimony market. According to the Institute of Geological Studies in the United States (USGS), China represents almost half of world antimony production, followed by Tayikistan (25%), with 21,000 tons in 2023.
Like tungsten, cobalt or magnesium, the antimony is one of the 34 raw materials “critical” by the European Union, for fear of a shortage caused by “concentration by a hand of world production in some countries” and the lack of alternatives. This metal is weird and expensive: in 2023, 54% of European imports came from Tayikistan, according to Brussels, and its price reached records last year after Chinese export restrictions.
For Tadjikistan, this sudden race towards metals is a blessing to revive its economy, the most fragile of former USS, marked by the civil war of the 1990s. Everywhere in Talco Gold, immense quotes and portraits of leader Emomali Rakhmon, in power since 1992, remember the importance of the sector for this majority country. One of them proclaims that “the important reserves of raw materials allow to guarantee accelerated industrialization”, a “requirement” of Emomali Rakhmon, which designated the period 2022-2026 as “industrial development, fourth national strategic objective.”
New Chinese influence
Before being exported, the mineral extracted by Talco Gold crushes in the enrichment factory, where “5,000 tons are treated daily, crushed in two immense drums, is shown in the vacarme Faïzoulo Safarov, one of the officials. To extract the antimony of the stone”, the metal is separated from the chemical reagents in the work of the flotation ” The metal is separated and filtered and filtered from the chemical reactions in the flotation work, “the state explained it. In the decantation basins”, the last step before being packaged in bags, in the form of sand “that contains an average of 30% of pure antimony,” explains Faïzoulooulo Safarov.
In Talco, this ambitious work was launched in 2022 thanks to Beijing’s investments, co-lista of the Saritag Deposit. This project takes the torch that began in the Soviet era by Moscow: the Soviet galleries partly rebuilt are always visible, as well as several mosaics glorifying the extraction of antimony, or a pale portrait of Lenin, founder of the USSR.
But Beijing, an essential power in Central Asia in the process of dethroning Russia and its historical influence, now has the hand. And it is with Chinese leader Xi Jinping that President Rakhmon appears on a sign that presents them as the “golden key for Tayikistan-China friendship.” A growing association that benefits Talco, which wants to become the first company in the world, with the next opening of a treatment plant to purify the antimony.
Source: BFM TV
