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The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - August 2, 2024
Since this hole was drilled in 2020, Nova has outlined 1.1 million oz of gold at RPM.
Nova Minerals Ltd. July 31 announced the start of a drill program to upgrade and expand the resources at the RPM gold deposit on its Estelle project about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage, Alaska.
The start of the 2024 program at Estelle comes days after the Australian company completed its American listing on the Nasdaq Capital Market through a $3.3 million initial public offering.
"A U.S. listing has been our goal for a long time as the logical next step with our flagship Estelle Gold Project being a North American asset and an increasing US investor base," said Nova Minerals CEO Chris Gerteisen. "Now it's a reality, and we believe this can be a catalyst to create further shareholder value through increased exposure and liquidity available in the U.S. market."
In preparation for this milestone American listing, the company had a resource calculated for Estelle that is compliant with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) S-K 1300 reporting guidelines.
The new S-K 1300 pit-constrained resource for Estelle outlines 244 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 0.3 grams per metric ton (2.72 million ounces) gold, plus 231 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.3 g/t (2.45 million oz) gold.
This resource is divided into two project areas at Estelle, the large bulk-tonnage Korbel area at the north end of the 198-square-mile (513 square kilometers) property and the RPM area about 16 miles (25 kilometers) to the south.
According to the S-K 1300-compliant calculation, Korbel hosts 240 metric tons of the overall Estelle measured and indicated resources averaging 0.3 g/t (2.39 million oz) gold, plus 185 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.3 g/t (1.65 million oz) gold.
The RPM deposits host 4.4 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 2.5 g/t (330,000 oz) gold, plus 46 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.5 g/t (800,000 oz) gold.
These resources do not include approximately 6,600 meters of drilling completed late last year at Estelle.
Nova is currently working on a feasibility study (FS) that is looking at establishing an initial smaller-scale operation at the higher-grade RPM deposit for expected early cashflow; and then developing a larger operation at Estelle.
The company says it has received some partnership interest from large gold mining companies.
"Now in the FS stage, the asset is progressing towards development with our strategy reflecting the flexibility of the project to current market conditions and our commitment to balance sheet management, with a low-capex, expected high margin, scalable start-up operation with potential self-funded expansion and/or a strategic partner to advance the full-scale production scenario to ultimately realize our goal of becoming a tier 1 gold producer with the Estelle gold project," said Gerteisen. "This strategy provides a defined path to production designed to provide free cashflow, while potentially allowing us to continue to unlock the district organically and to deliver on our prior track record of resource growth, new discoveries, at a low-cost per discovery ounce."
In preparation for the feasibility study, Nova's 2024 program involves highly targeted reverse circulation drilling to upgrade and expand resources at RPM. Most of this drilling will target a higher-grade starter pit area at RPM to further delineate an at-surface zone encountered there with drilling completed over the previous two years. This year's drilling will also focus on upgrading inferred resources and testing for potential near surface extensions of the RPM gold system to the south and west.
In addition to drilling and other studies to prepare a feasibility study for RPM, Nova plans to continue to explore the critical mineral potential across the wider Estelle property.
Last year, the company completed an expansive surface exploration mapping and sampling program across the entire Estelle property. This discovery program included 45 traverses covering 100-line kilometers, 674 soil samples, 446 rock samples and 21 stream sediment samples.
In addition to precious metals, this surface exploration campaign discovered widespread antimony and copper at several sites across the Estelle property.
With these elements having the potential to provide significant by-product credits, the company is continuing to include multi-element analysis for all samples to define these resources for potential future extraction from the gold processing waste stream or as a stand-alone small-scale operation for near term cash flow.
The company says it is pursuing the potential offered by the strong antimony showings identified at Estelle, as well as federal and state grants for critical minerals development studies and processing plant capital requirements.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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