Our country has achieved major breakthroughs in the new round of mineral exploration, with new discoveries of rare earth deposits and antimony deposits.

The Ministry of Natural Resources recently released the results of the verification and exploration of rare earth mineral resource reserves for the Niupingtan rare earth mining area in Mian Ning County, Sichuan Province. The mining area has added 9.666 million tons of rare earth resources. To date, the Niupingtan mining area’s cumulative identified rare earth resources have reached 11.46 million tons, representing an increase of over 500%.

It is understood that the Niupingtan rare earth mine was discovered in the early 1980s and has been mined on an ongoing basis. In 2023, China Northern Rare Earth Group’s Zhongxi (Liangshan) Rare Earth Co., Ltd. jointly with the Institute of Mineral Resources, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, and the First Geological Team of the Sichuan Provincial Department of Geology carried out a deep prospecting campaign. After nearly three years of sustained efforts to break through, the deep prospecting work achieved a major breakthrough. The project adopted an integrated cooperation advancement model of “production–education–research,” realizing innovative breakthroughs in metallogenic theory and driving leapfrog development in prospecting technology.

Rare earths are known as “industrial vitamins,” and are a key raw material for high-tech industries and defense science and technology industries.

It is reported that the Niupingtan mining area’s rare earth mineral resource reserves verification and exploration project also added associated fluorite resources of 27.135 million tons and associated barite resources of 37.228 million tons, both reaching super-large scale and holding major strategic significance. Fluorite, also known as fluorspar, is the source of industrial fluorine elements; it is crucial to emerging industries and future industries. Barite’s main component is barium sulfate. In the field of oil and natural gas exploration and production, it serves as a drilling mud weighting agent with irreplaceable importance.

At the same time, the Ministry of Natural Resources also released the results of a project to verify and explore the antimony mine resource reserves for the Xingtongliang ore block in the Washigou area of Dangchang County, Gansu Province. The newly added resource amount is 51,455 tons. The mining area’s cumulative identified resource amount has increased by 52%. The deposit scale has been upgraded from medium to large, indicating important progress in antimony ore resource exploration in the west Qinling area of Gansu.

The Washigou antimony deposit is located in the Luqu–Dangchang–Liangdang antimony-mercury-gold metallogenic belt in the west Qinling. It is one of the representative deposits in this metallogenic belt. As of August 31, 2025, the Washigou mining area has cumulatively identified 30.633 million tons of ore and 149,732 tons of antimony metal.

As a key strategic mineral resource, antimony is widely used in important fields such as flame-retardant materials, photovoltaic glass, lead-acid storage batteries, special alloys, and military-grade semiconductor products, thanks to its unique physical and chemical properties.

This achievement not only clarifies the scale of utilizable resources in the mining area and strengthens the country’s strategic reserve of antimony mine resources, but also provides replicable and scalable experience for research on metallogenic rules and prospecting in the deep and peripheral areas of mines in the west Qinling region.