Kristie Batten: Felix Gold’s plan to make US antimony production a reality in 2025

Felix Gold has laid its antimony ambitions bare, targeting 2025 restart of historic Scrafford mine in Alaska after this year’s price spike.

Felix Gold is moving fast to become the ASX and US' first antimony producer, writes Kristie Batten. Pic: Supplied/Stockhead

One of Australia’s top mining journalists, Kristie Batten writes for Stockhead every week in her regular column placing a watchful eye on the movers and shakers of the small cap resources scene.

The US is in a race to restart antimony production and Felix Gold (ASX:FXG) believes it could be at the front of the pack.

Antimony is listed as a critical mineral by most Western economies and the price has been on a tear this year, rising around 300%.

Recently announced Chinese export restrictions shone a spotlight on the lack of antimony production in the West.

Given antimony’s importance in defence applications, the US is keen to produce the metal domestically.

Felix executive director Joseph Webb told a recent webinar that there were no active antimony mines in the US.

“Antimony (is) the hottest metal in the market right now and more importantly, there’s a fundamental supply issue,” he said.

The Kalgoorlie of Alaska

Felix is focused on the Fairbanks region of Alaska, where it holds several brownfields gold and antimony projects and is the largest landholder.

Webb described Fairbanks as the “Kalgoorlie of Alaska” due to its status as a mining town and its proximity to infrastructure.

Felix’s projects, which include two historic antimony mines, are within 20km of Fairbanks.

“For us, it’s the location of this project. It’s surrounded by infrastructure and it’s in the US in a mining town,” Webb said.

Within Felix’s Treasure Island project sits the Scrafford antimony mine, which operated intermittently between 1915 and 1977 at grades of up to 58% antimony.

Felix has an aggressive fast-track strategy and is aiming to be in production by the end of 2025.

“It’s ambitious but we’re not afraid of that,” Webb said.

The company believes it can establish a “small scale but highly valuable” 5000 tonne per annum operation for low capital costs.

Felix is awaiting results from metallurgical test work but is confident given the project’s status as a previous producer.

Engineering scoping work is underway with a target completion date for all studies of September at the latest.

Felix will also kick off the approvals process, which Webb acknowledged was probably the biggest risk, with the aim of being fully permitted by October.

The company will apply for US government funding in February.

“We’re in the US where they’re desperate to get antimony,” Webb said.

“We’ve got a lot of meat on the bones and we’ve got a great head start.”

Webb said Felix had a chance to operate the US’ only antimony mine.

“We think first mover advantage on this is important,” he said.

“We think this is a race to get into production and we’re well advanced compared to others.”

The longer game

As the name suggests, Felix listed on the ASX as a gold explorer three years ago.

“We have a significant gold package through the Fairbanks mining district,” Webb said.

Despite the more recent antimony focus, the company has made good process on its gold assets, outlining total resources of 831,000oz.

At the Grant mine, another historical producer, Felix has a resource of 364,000oz of gold at 1.95g/t, including a high-grade underground resource of 136,000oz at 6.2g/t.

Grant operated in the 1980s and achieved recoveries of up to 98%.

The deposit remains open at strike and along depth.

“That’s something we’ll be adding onto and we think this will be a significant asset in the Fairbanks mining district,” Webb said.

Felix’s NW Array project has a resource of 467,000oz at 0.58g/t gold and is seen as a near-surface bulk mining opportunity.

Grant is 30km from Kinross Gold’s large Fort Knox mine, while NW Array is just 20km away.

Fort Knox produced 272,357oz of gold in the first nine months of 2024.

“Fort Knox is actively searching for more ore supply,” Webb said.

“We’ve got something unique here which is there’s a tier one gold mine looking for more ore supply and we’ve been building up a resource base around that in the tonnes and grade profile that have supplied this mill historically or are currently supplying it.

“We’re looking at being an option for that but we’re also looking at standalone opportunities.”

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Felix Gold is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

Originally published as Kristie Batten: Felix Gold’s plan to make US antimony production a reality in 2025