A $43.4 million military award is building an antimony refinery at Port MacKenzie

Construction of an antimony refinery near Port MacKenzie is set to begin as soon as a barge carrying almost 500 tons of processing equipment reaches the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in early September, the first ground work on a $43.4 million military project for a mineral China restricted in 2024.

Nova Minerals Corp. said the equipment left Seattle by barge on Aug. 26, bound for a 42.81-acre industrial site within two miles of the port's deepwater infrastructure. The company disclosed the shipment in a Form 8-K furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 27. The load includes crushing, ore sorting, milling, flotation and refining equipment sourced from a decommissioned North American facility and other suppliers rather than a plant built for the site, which Nova said cut costs and time. It targets first production in 2027.

Nova disclosed on Oct. 1, 2025, that its subsidiary, Alaska Range Resources LLC, received a $43.4 million Defense Production Act Title III award from the U.S. Department of War to extract, concentrate and refine stibnite into military-grade antimony trisulfide from the Estelle project in western Susitna. Title III lets the government pay companies to build industrial capacity; stibnite is the ore antimony comes from. Antimony is on the federal critical minerals list. That award does not appear in USAspending.gov, consistent with a Title III agreement recorded outside the database but unconfirmed there. All information about the shipment, award and site comes from Nova's own filings.

The refinery will run at first on a test batch. Nova calls the works a pilot plant and Estelle still in exploration and development. Bulk sample material from the Stibium and Styx prospects goes to a camp called Whiskey Bravo for crushing and sorting. Nova said in August that more than 50 tons had been moved there for the plant's initial feed. Selected material then travels to Port MacKenzie by air or snow road. Nova's plan of operations for the project awaits final review by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

Nova disclosed on Oct. 10, 2025, that it secured a land use permit for the parcel. The parcel sits near the notional junction of a proposed rail spur and the proposed West Susitna Access Road. On Aug. 27, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority board authorized up to $25 million for geotechnical drilling and other road work over 2026 and 2027, benefiting Nova's Estelle project, U.S. GoldMining's Whistler prospect and Terra Energy's Susitna basin coal project. The board's vote was unanimous.

The 78.5-mile road has no constructible design yet and requires a Clean Water Act Section 404 permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to fill wetlands, before construction, according to the Susitna River Coalition. The coalition, which obtained AIDEA's file through a public records request, says AIDEA applied on July 24, 2025, and the Corps called the application incomplete a month later. No public comment period can open until it is. Inletkeeper, an environmental group, has said fast-tracked reviews with comment periods as short as four or 30 days could limit consideration of wetlands, rivers and subsistence resources; neither group's position is addressed in Nova's or AIDEA's disclosures.

One question remains open: what air quality authorization the refinery requires under Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation rules, and whether Nova has applied, has not been established. The department's air permit pages returned no results when checked on Sept. 2.