Nova Minerals weighs up golden opportunities

With gold prices forecast to hit US$3,000 an ounce next year, Nova Minerals is assessing options to develop its Estelle gold and critical minerals project in Alaska’s Tintina belt.

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• With gold prices forecast for more highs, Nova Minerals is targeting development of its Estelle gold and critical minerals project in Alaska’s Tintina belt

• Nova is also aiming for resource expansion at a high-grade deposit while advancing feasibility studies

• As well as high-grade and close-to-surface gold from IRGS deposits, Estelle is hosting high-grade critical mineral antimony

Special Report: With gold prices forecast to hit US$3,000 an ounce next year, Nova Minerals is assessing options to develop its Estelle gold and critical minerals project in Alaska’s Tintina belt.

As investors assess the likely impacts of the Trump trifecta, Goldman Sachs is forecasting gold prices to reach a record US$3,000 an ounce next year.

The leading investment bank’s prediction came as bullion has bounced back nearly 2% to top US$2,600 an ounce this week. That followed a commodity-price-buffeting US dollar rally in the immediate wake of the Republicans winning control of the White House, House of Reps and Senate.

Goldman Sachs has now listed the yellow metal among its top commodity picks for 2025. Its reasons:

• foreshadowed Federal Reserve rate cuts that will cut the opportunity costs of holding gold;
• proposed tariffs driving demand for the historic inflation hedge; and
• steady buying from central banks worried about rising US debt.

Stellar options

As gold miners look ahead to never-seen-before prices, Nova Minerals has the luxury of three options to progress its Estelle project, with a feasibility studies well underway.

Nova Minerals’ (ASX:NVA) project in Alaska’s prolific Tintina belt currently has a 9.9Moz JORC global resource with high grades close to surface, including a super high-grade zone of 180,000 oz at 4.1 grams per tonne (g/t) gold in the highest confidence measured category with a resource to follow short order.

Across a 35-kilometre-long mineralised corridor Estelle has at least 20 advanced gold and antimony prospects, four of them known large IRGS (intrusion related gold system) deposits.

That provides plenty of exploration upside, especially as less than 5% of the 514sqkm property has been explored and it’s in a province that’s home to a documented gold endowment of more than 220 million ounces. Some of the world-class discoveries in the neighbourhood include Barrick's Donlin Creek Gold Project and Kinross Gold Corporation's Fort Knox Gold Mine.

Aiming for scalable production, Nova is weighing up a small-scale low capex start-up mine through the higher grade RPM deposit as early as 2026 against a larger-scale higher-capex option. The first strategy would draw on internal funds and provide cashflow to fund the expansion of the larger Estelle project organically. The second would leverage the interest of larger gold miners as strategic partners.

Revving up RPM

Within RPM Nova has also been targeting resource expansion at the high-grade RPM North pit area.

CEO Christopher Gerteisen said the company has continued to hit wide intercepts of high-grade mineralisation, which bodes well for the upcoming resource update and pre-feasibility study.

“More 2024 drill results are pending and once all received, we will begin work on the resource update,” Gerteisen said.

The first eight holes of a 21-hole RC program have delivered multiple surface intersections of at least 5 g/t. Interval grades have showed up to 39 g/t in sections and a thick 43m at 4.4g/t gold mineralisation was discovered from the ground down.

Results will be incorporated into an upcoming resource update and pre-feasibility study of the RPM starter for an open pit mine.

Also to be added in will be improvements to the flow sheet from the scoping study, which has already proven simple metallurgy for easy gold liberation.

Antimony in mix

Another bonus of the Tintina belt is that it hosts significant antimony deposits and was a historical North American producer of the critical mineral.

Through the Stibium deposit at Estelle, the experienced management team at Nova is also looking at an option to develop a low-capex antimony-gold operation.

Surface sampling at the deposit has returned high grades of both gold, at 12.7 g/t, and 60.5% antimony.

With the US Department of Defense seeking domestic sources of the mineral, US funding could potentially kickstart production as soon as next year.

The antimony price has soared even more than gold this year, to US$32,750/t by the end of October from $US12,000t at the start of this year thanks to leading producer China’s shock move to restrict exports from September 15.

That’s sparked a scramble for the critical mineral used in a broad range of military applications as well as smartphones and semiconductors.

“With RPM and all the other targets, who knows how big this could be,” Gerteisen said.

This article was developed in collaboration with Nova Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.