The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - January 3, 2025
The sale of non-core assets positions Nova Minerals to advance its antimony and gold projects at Estelle.
Nova Minerals Ltd. Jan. 2 announced that it has raised $6.7 million (A$10.9 million) through the sale of 6.6 million shares of Snow Lake Resources Ltd., an energy metals exploration company with lithium and uranium projects in Canada and Namibia.
Nova, which founded Snow Lake in 2021, decided to sell its holdings in the company in order to focus its resources on advancing the Estelle gold-antimony project in Alaska.
"With Nova's continued exploration success on its Estelle gold and antimony project in Alaska, we understand its need for funding to continue its exploration activities on Estelle," Snow Lake penned in a statement on the sales.
Nova has applied $4 million (A$6.4 million) of the cash raised to repay a loan from Nebari Holdings, a mining finance company with offices in New York, Toronto, London, and Perth. This payment leaves a $1.4 million (A$2.3 million) remaining balance on the $7 million (A$11.3 million) loan it took out from Nebari at the end of 2022.
The Alaska-focused exploration company says the ability to reduce its debt and strengthen its balance sheet with non-dilutive funds from the sale of Snow Lake shares improves its flexibility to advance its gold and antimony initiatives at Estelle.
"This transaction starts the year on a very positive note, with further assay results from the 2024 exploration program expected back shortly and many more catalysts to follow in 2025, underscoring our commitment to creating long-term value for our shareholders by actively managing our portfolio, extinguishing debt, and investing in high-potential opportunities," said Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen.
The company has also added $790,000 (A$1.3 million) to its treasury through the exercise of NASDAQ warrants over the past months.
"The sale of Snow Lake, and the additional funds received from the warrants conversion, not only strengthens our financial position, but also enable us to focus on the exploration and development of our critical minerals assets, such as antimony," Gerteisen added.
While Nova has discovered antimony at several targets across its 198-square-mile (514 square kilometers) Estelle property, much of its exploration for this critical metalloid has focused on the Stibium target.
Samples containing up to 60.5% antimony and 141 grams per metric ton gold have been collected from Stibium over the past two years.
The high-grade antimony mineralization discovered at Stibium has piqued the interest of officials from the U.S. Department of Defense, which are looking for reliable domestic supplies of this metalloid that is a vital ingredient for ammunition, fireproofing compounds, night vision equipment, and a wide range of other military and civilian uses.
Nova management is in talks with Pentagon officials about a potential grant to support the development of a small pilot-scale mine at Stibium, which has the potential to be a significant source of antimony due to the high grades found there.
The urgency to develop domestic supplies of antimony increased with China's Dec. 3 ban on all direct or indirect exports of Chinese antimony to the U.S.
Toward the goal of rapidly developing a pilot-scale antimony mine at Estelle, Nova collected a 2,500-kilogram bulk sample from Stibium and a 500-kilogram bulk sample from Styx, another high-grade antinomy target, during the 2024 summer program at Estelle.
In addition to developing Estelle's antimony potential, Nova continues to advance toward feasibility-level studies for developing a mine at the RPM gold deposits.
According to a calculation completed early in 2024, RPM hosts 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.
High-grade gold intercepts encountered during a 21-hole drill program carried out by Nova during the summer are being incorporated into an upgraded and expanded resource that will serve as the basis for feasibility-level studies for mine development.
"This is an exciting time for the company, with the Estelle gold and critical minerals project well-positioned to take advantage of the current macro-economic events for both gold and antimony, and we look forward to providing further updates on the exciting planned 2025 exploration program and other key initiatives in due course," Gerteisen said.
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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