Nova Minerals has confirmed the discovery of the Stibium and Styx antimony prospects within the Estelle gold project in Alaska.
Field observations and soil and rock chip assays from the company’s current exploration program identified an abundance of massive stibnite (which is the primary ore source for the critical mineral antimony) hosted in quartz veins within areas coinciding with potential gold mineralisation.
The results indicate the presence of antimony-enriched gold mineralisation within the Estelle gold trend and has led Nova to include antimony analysis as part of its future assay protocol and resource work at the project.
The company will also conduct a review of existing multi-element assays to determine if antimony is also coincident within other high-priority gold prospects.
Good timing
Nova chief executive officer Christopher Gerteisen said identifying antimony at Estelle was good timing in the current market.
“The discovery of high-grade stibnite associated with the gold system emerging at Estelle represents a significant development for us as the US government has listed antimony as a critical and strategic mineral to the nation’s economic and national security interests,” he said.
“Our team is now assessing the potential scale of this discovery and the additional value it could add to this project via the domestic supply of a mineral which has historically relied on imports from China and Russia.”
Grant and funding options
While Nova is yet to identify the scale and strategic importance of its antimony discoveries, Mr Gerteisen said the company had already made moves to approach the US government’s defence and energy departments to discuss grant and funding options.
In order to qualify for funding, proposed projects must offer an industrial resource, material or technology which is essential to the national defence and cannot be reasonably provided in a timely manner by US industry without presidential action.
In July, Canadian-listed Perpetua Resources Corporation was granted US$24.8 million in funding for environmental and engineering studies and ancillary permits needed for the domestic production of an antimony trisulfide capability for defence-related energetic materials.
In August, Perpetua received a further US$15.5 million to demonstrate a fully domestic antimony trisulfide supply chain using ore from its Stibnite gold project in Idaho.
