Why miners think America’s critical minerals obsession will continue to grow

• The noise from the US Government to support critical minerals production is only getting louder, miners say

• American Federal and State authorities are unlocking billions in funding, alongside private partners, to produce and stockpile commodities like rare earths, antimony and tungsten

• Nova Minerals is aiming to become among the first local producers of antimony in the US in years from its Estelle project in Alaska

The push to develop America’s critical minerals supplies is only going to intensify from here, predicts a mining executive at the centre of plans to revive production of one of the US military’s most desired commodities.

The inauguration of the second Trump administration in early 2025 supercharged a shift that began under Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, with serious US Government investment going into critical minerals where China’s dominance had become a key risk.

Antimony – used in munitions, night-vision goggles, solar panels, semiconductors and other industries linked to the defence supply chain – was among the first critical minerals to be restricted from crossing the Great Wall in 2023.

Its subsequent surge from US$12,000/t to as much as US$60,000/t across 2024 sounded an alarm on just how tight supply outside the Middle Kingdom is. Though prices have since retreated, the message around the need for new Western supply hasn’t.

America, once able to fill its own order book from domestic mines shut decades ago, recognised the need to restock without the help of its geopolitical rivals.

With the Iran war chewing up billions of dollars worth of US munitions and Donald Trump leaving a summit in Beijing with Xi Jinping this month without an agreement to end export controls on critical minerals, the incentive to revive domestic operations is arguably stronger than ever.

That’s the message of Nova Minerals (ASX:NVA) CEO Christopher Gerteisen, whose company is aiming to use a US$43.4m Department of War grant to produce antimony trisulphide for the Pentagon as soon as the end of this year.

“Maybe the headlines are filled with Iran war stuff, but certainly in the background it is front and centre,” Gerteisen said.

“It’s never been more urgent than ever because of course, the antimony which is what we’re working on, is used in all the munitions.

“They’ve blown out so many munitions that I was just reading an article today, it’s going to take three years to rebuild US stockpiles of a lot of these munitions.

“I’m getting calls every week from the Department of War and the US Government saying have you guys got it yet? Have you produced the antimony trisulphide yet?”

Long-term driver

Even if the Trump-Xi summit had delivered more concrete outcomes on critical minerals, Gerteisen doesn’t see the US shifting on plans to expand and eventually become self-sufficient in critical minerals.

He pointed to the US$12 billion Project Vault program – a public-private partnership bringing banks, commodity traders and the US Government together to grow the country’s strategic stockpile – as an indication of where the currents are heading in critical minerals funding.

“The US Government’s not taking its hand off the throttle or its foot off the pedal,” Gerteisen said.

“I mean (a deal with Beijing’s) for … near term relief to be able to continue our manufacturing. But if there was an agreement struck, it’s like, all right, we’re going to lift export controls.

“That doesn’t mean the US government’s taking their hand off the throttle. There’s no way.”

While China has reputedly agreed to address shortages overseas of rare earths and similar metals like yttrium, scandium, indium and neodymium, Project Vault shows the US Government knows it needs to take control of its own future.

It was further highlighted by an agreement between the “Quad” group of countries – USA, India, Australia and Japan – to mobilise US$20bn in public and private funding to secure critical minerals supply chains.

“The government is stepping in to stockpile and warehouse significant quantities of critical minerals,” Gerteisen said.

“So that’s just one of many programs.

“DoE, DoW, the Department of Commerce, DOC, they have critical minerals initiatives all over the place.

“And we’ve actually been applying for a number of those where we got a lot of irons in the fire.

“We’ve already been successful at the antimony, been a first mover in that space. But watch the news flow. If we’re successful, then there’s other critical minerals in our ores because we really recognised early on that the race is on for critical minerals and we’ve really taken a holistic approach to our project.”

Double pronged

Nova on Thursday announced a 10,000m drill program for the upcoming field season in Alaska.

That will include around 7000m on its gold assets – Estelle contains a world class 9.9Moz resource representing a district scale play at the bottom end of the renowned Tintina gold belt.

A pre-feasibility study on the enormous precious metals opportunity at hand is in the works.

Another 3000m will go into drilling at the Stibium and Styx antimony prospects, where Nova will eventually roll out a resource and scoping study on an expanded operation.

But even before then the presence of high-grade stibnite veins at surface and Nova’s acquisition of earthmoving and plant equipment mean it plans to be a producer by late 2026 or early 2027.

Speed to market is critical, with a refinery site already established at Port Mackenzie.

“If we can mine this material, even at 5% out of the ground with an excavator, we can put it through the ore sorter and upgrade it to 15-25%,” Gerteisen said.

“Then that coarse concentrate after the ore sorter, we take down to our Port Mackenzie site, where we’re gonna have all the downstream processing and refining.

“At Port Mackenzie, you’ll see that’s where the milling (will be) and we’ll have a flotation plant and we produce a 40-60% concentrate.

“And then our testwork now has led us toward the hydrometallurgical path for refining rather than a pyrometallurgical path.”

The leached material will be taken to a further step to produce antimony trisulphide for the US military, the first of what could be a number of products for the US industrial base once the mine is expanded.

Nova has $85m in funding through its cash pile and the DoW funding, with a plan to redomicile in the United States opening the door to new passive investment flows as it targets entry into indices like the Russell 2000 for US-listed small caps.

More early movers

Nova is one of a number of companies riding US policy tailwinds to gains.

Locksley Resources (ASX:LKY) has put together a string of rare earths and antimony targets at its Mojave project in California, located on the doorstep of America’s only hard rock rare earths mine, Mountain Pass.

Mojave not only includes the large El Campo rare earths prospect, a 900m long carbonatite target where surface samples have clocked in at up to 12.1% total rare earths oxide.

It also includes the historic Desert antimony mine, enabling Locksley to potentially service two of America’s most acute critical minerals needs from one project.

A four hole diamond drilling program at El Campo was kicked off in April, with processing pathways already being assessed in a collaboration with Columbia University.

Meanwhile, feedstock from Desert has already been used to produce a 99.5% pure antimony trioxide sample at lab scale, after a program testing pyrometallurgical techniques to refine its antimony feedstock.

Red Mountain Mining (ASX:RMX) this year acquired a string of US tungsten and antimony assets, including the Thompson Falls project on the Montana-Idaho border, 7km west of America’s only operating antimony smelter.

That’s owned by US Antimony Corporation, which has a deal to supply up to US$245m of the metal to the US Defense Logistics Agency, and received a US$27m DoW grant to expand and modernise its processing facilities.

Along with Thompson Falls, which has reported rock chips of up to 36.5% antimony and 1.12ppm gold, it also owns the Yellow Pine and Silver Dollar antimony projects in central Idaho, near the Antimony Ridge project where ASX lister Resolution Minerals (ASX:RML) recently received FAST-41 status.

It doubled down on its US critical minerals push with the acquisition of Pioneer Tungsten, which covers 209 hectares right next to Western market leader Almonty Industries’ (ASX:AII) Gentung deposit, which hosts a resource of 6.83Mt at 0.315% WO3.

The ground sits adjacent also to the historically producing Lost Creek and Ivanhoe mines, which sit on Almonty’s tenements.

Defence metal tungsten is not only in high demand from the US military, but prices have surged from under US$500/mtu a year ago to over US$3000/mtu (equivalent to 10kg) thanks to export controls from dominant producer China.

American Tungsten & Antimony (ASX:AT4) is seeking to produce both of the critical minerals sought after by the Pentagon, receiving a 40% tax credit from the state of Utah in a sign the investment in domestic critical minerals production is trickling down from Federal to State level.

The 40% state tax credit, part of Utah’s Rural Economic Development Tax Increment Financing (REDTIF) program, will help AT4 make the case to develop its Antimony Canyon project in Garfield County.

“This recognition from the State of Utah represents a major milestone for American Tungsten and Antimony and reinforces the strategic importance of establishing a secure, domestic supply chain for critical minerals in the United States,” MD Andre Booyzen said.

“Our planned antimony tertiary refining facility and integrated mining and processing strategy are designed to support America’s growing demand for materials essential to defence, energy, and advanced manufacturing.”

AT4, which recently nailed down a $10m ahead of a planned Nasdaq listing, with maiden diamond drilling coming at its Tennessee Mountain tungsten project in Nevada.

Its decision not to accept oversubscriptions in the raising was down in part to the abundance of federal funding schemes for which AT4 has applied.