Nova Minerals announced late Tuesday that it has received final approvals from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources for the plan of operations and reclamation plan for its antimony project, completing the project’s permitting process and clearing the way for construction and development. The company said it secured all required permits within about three months of submission. In 2025 Nova secured a land use permit for its proposed antimony refinery on 42.81 acres of commercial industrial zoned land near Port MacKenzie in the Mat Su Borough.
Phase 1 is fully funded through $43.4 million in Department of War funding to support domestic production capacity for military grade antimony trisulfide. The permits cover stibnite mining at the Styx and Stibium prospects, ore sorting and processing at the Whiskey Bravo concentration site within the Estelle project, and downstream processing and refining at Port MacKenzie. The refinery is planned to produce antimony trisulfide, antimony trioxide and antimony metal for military and industrial uses. Nova said all major long lead and critical mining and processing equipment has been procured and delivered, and that process plant engineering and metallurgical test work have established a flowsheet designed to produce military grade antimony trisulfide and standard grade II antimony metal above 99.65 percent antimony.
Chief executive Christopher Gerteisen said securing the final permits moves the project from development planning toward construction and targeted production in 2027, and described the aim as the first modern, fully integrated United States domestic antimony supply chain in decades. The mining anchor is the district scale Estelle project, which Nova describes as a 10 million ounce gold project in the Tintina gold belt, where antimony has historically been associated with large gold deposits.
Nova stock closed up 6.7 percent Tuesday on NYSE American, and the company has a market capitalisation of $121.4 million, smaller than the federal funding package behind the antimony phase. That ratio is the story’s risk frame: execution, not permitting or headline funding, is now the binding constraint, and the 2027 production target will be judged against construction progress at three separate sites, the mine, the concentrator and the Port MacKenzie refinery.