Nova Minerals secures funding from US Government 

Nova Minerals’ (ASX: NVA) US subsidiary Alaska Range Resources (ARR) has been awarded $65.5m (US$43.4m) to produce antimony trisulfide at its Estelle gold and critical minerals project in Alaska. 

The 24-month agreement will allow ARR to accelerate development of a fully integrated US antimony supply chain to extract, concentrate and refine stibnite to produce military grade antimony trisulfide to assist in meeting the US defence industrial base demands. 

The project is funded through the US Department of War (DoW) Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritisation (MCEIP) directorate’s Defence Production Act Purchases office and awarded through the Defence Industrial Base Consortium (DIBC) other transaction agreement (OTA).  

Nova Minerals chief executive Christopher Gerteisen comments on the award. 

“We are proud to have ARR partner with the US DoW to help secure a fully domestic, redundant supply chain for the munitions and other defence products our troops need to keep our nation and allies safe, as well as future supply to the US industrial base for a wide range of traditional and high-tech applications, including semiconductors and energy systems,” he said. 

“This award will fund the initial phase of [Nova’s] strategy to establish a full spectrum state of the art antimony mining and refining hub based in Alaska to supply refined antimony products to the US industrial base and beyond.  

“After conducting rigorous vetting and technical due diligence of the Estelle project, ARR is proud to be the recipient of this award, which provides further confidence in the quality of antimony of mineralisation and highlights the potential scale and scope of future antimony production from the Estelle project. 

“The Estelle project will play a central role in this effort where Alaska will be at the heart of the country’s supply of critical materials and we look forward to working closely with our local partners from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) CORE-CM group, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (ADNR), the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, and Alaska Tribes and Native Corporations to bring Estelle into production.”