Nova Minerals says Port MacKenzie plant could far exceed funded antimony pilot

Nova Minerals said Tuesday that the secondhand ore plant it shipped to Port MacKenzie would be able, once assembled, to crush and grind about 216,000 metric tons of ore a year. That is far beyond the capacity of the federally funded antimony refinery the company is building at the Mat-Su port.

The Nov. 10 release, furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is the first of Nova's SEC filings to put a capacity number on the plant. It is also the first to name where the plant came from: Agnico Eagle's Hope Bay gold project.

The figure covers the front end of the plant, the crushing, sorting, grinding and concentrating circuits. The release says they run as two parallel lines of about 108,000 tons a year each. The assessment is attributed to Damian Connelly of METS Engineering, a Nova contractor.

The funded first phase is backed by a $43.4 million award supported by the U.S. Department of War. A Nova subsidiary, Alaska Range Resources, received the award in October 2025 under the Defense Production Act, according to the company's annual report. That phase is designed to produce up to about 600 tons a year of refined antimony, limited by its electrowinning equipment, and targets military-grade antimony trisulfide in 2027. The release calls that phase "not representative" of what the plant could ultimately support.

Beyond that, the release offers modeling, not plans. It says added electrowinning and melting capacity could let the plant support about 9,400 tons a year of refined antimony from ore grading 5% antimony, or about 20,000 tons from 10% ore, without new crushing or grinding equipment.

The release does not say what that equipment would cost, how it would be paid for, what permits it would need or where ore at those grades would come from. It also leaves open whether ore from Nova's Estelle project can supply feed at 5% to 10% antimony, and whether a larger operation would need changes to the plant's state air permit.

Nova has said it lacks the money to carry its plans on its own. Its annual report, filed with the SEC on Sept. 30, says the company does not generate significant revenue and depends on stock or debt financing, and that there is "substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."

Nova also pitches Port MacKenzie as a toll-processing hub for ore and concentrate from other Alaska producers, and for metals including tungsten, gallium, bismuth, tellurium and arsenic. The release names no producer that has agreed to send material.

On Oct. 27, Nova said the state Department of Natural Resources had given final approval to its plans to mine antimony ore at Estelle, sort it there and refine it at Port MacKenzie, for an initial three-year term. Tuesday's release does not change what the state has approved.