With Northern Star on its side, PolarX is seeking world class US copper and gold mines

• PolarX was a champion of North American copper and gold exploration long before the Trump Administration’s push to revive US critical minerals
• It has Northern Star on board to fund $60m of exploration including drilling at its high grade Alaska Range copper-gold project
• That will free up millions for drilling at the Humboldt Range gold project in Nevada as bullion prices hit US$4000/oz

The first arrow has been fired by the Trump Administration in its efforts to revive domestic production of copper in the United States.

Its largesse was on Tuesday put on glaring display in its US$35.6m deal to acquire an initial 10% stake in Trilogy Metals, the half-owner of the Ambler Metals project in Alaska alongside ASX listed mining giant South32 (ASX:S32).

That agreement, which will include federal support for a road to the remote site, thought to hold similarities to the legendary Mt Isa copper district in Queensland, is the latest example of the current US Government’s intention to revive critical minerals production under the guise of national security.

Many companies are flocking to the States in the hope of catching those tailwinds.

One company which has focused on the untapped potential of two of America’s hottest exploration districts for years thinks the policy environment for Stateside explorers is as good as it’s ever been.

PolarX (ASX:PXX) has invested in maintaining large ground positions in Alaska and Nevada for several years.

Its Humboldt Range project in Nevada is well-positioned but at an earlier stage, while its Caribou Dome and Zackly deposits in Alaska are among the highest grade undeveloped copper sources globally.

At Caribou Dome, PolarX has already outlined 7.2Mt at 3.1% copper and 6.5g/t silver in a JORC compliant resource, while at Zackly, a skarn originally discovered in 1979 but only lightly drilled until PXX began drilling in 2017, PolarX hosts 4Mt at 1.1% Cu, 1.6g/t gold and 12.6g/t silver.

“We’ve had a couple of great impacts from the Trump Government,” PolarX executive chairman Mark Bojanjac said.

“Literally, the day of inauguration, they signed a 20-plus page edict that reversed a lot of the more harsh environmental constraints over the last 20 years in Alaska.

“It’s very much easier to get things permitted. A lot of things which were held up by the Biden Government have just been brushed aside.

“It’s the first I can recall of governments getting involved in projects so that they’re home-grown. It’s huge news.

“For the last number of years, China’s been one of the bigger consumers of most metals. I think that’s going to change and if the US are serious and successful in actually rebuilding their industrialised capacity, then their consumption of copper and other metals like it will be the driver for future pricing.”

The great enabler

For years, the Alaska Range project has been limited largely by a common problem for junior mining stocks – funding. Not now. A deal in August will see $35bn capped Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST), buoyed by rampaging cash flows as gold prices have touched a record US$4000/oz this year, put $60m into exploration over five years to earn up to a 70% stake in the asset.

With $17m already due to be spent by March next year, the owner of the nearby Pogo gold mine is not resting on its laurels, and neither is PolarX.

Some 40Moz of gold has already been mined in the district to date, with another 200Moz of gold resource and over 50Mt of copper resources in projects at the feasibility stage.

Those include the 7.4Moz Pogo, 10Moz Fort Knox and 39Moz Donlin gold, owned by majors Northern Star, Kinross and Novagold respectively.

Alaska Range could already be a money-spinner on its own. A scoping study last year focused on Caribou Dome and Zackly doubled the project’s pre-tax NPV to $625m, with an IRR of 73.9%.

With copper prices closing on all time highs and gold roughly doubling since that study was released in 2024, there’s already upside baked in even before Northern Star’s investment, for an initial 15% stake in Alaska Range, is taken into account. But both PolarX and Northern Star are dreaming bigger.

“I think people have probably viewed these projects as relatively small scale, but very high grade. I wouldn’t be so convinced on the small scale aspect yet,” Bojanjac said.

“It’s been small-scale because we’ve had small budgets, that’s the absolute truth and a lot of the stuff we’ve seen this season, which we just didn’t have the budget to go and have a decent look at previously, I think it ultimately outclass what we’ve already got pretty quickly.

“We’ve got enough money over the next few years to go and find out and that’s really the game here.

“Northern Star want that too and the bottom line … is that they want to find something that’s big enough to move the dial for them in North America.

“And anything that moves the dial to somebody the size of a Northern Star is sure as hell going to change history for PolarX.”

Big upside

PXX has already flown some 3500km of geophysics ahead of drilling at Caribou Dome and has a string of large, undrilled targets to tackle beyond Caribou and Zackly such as Jupiter and Saturn.

True to their names, they could well dwarf the size of Zackly based on the mineralisation observed to date.

“We’ve got 150 samples in the lab now just from the reconnaissance work. And that will help us target next year for follow-up mapping and so forth, but also for the drill targets for the next couple of years there,” MD Jason Berton said.

“It’s about expanding the size. We know the footprint’s big, but we really want to actually add to the resource base and that’s what we’re doing with this.

“We’re getting that groundwork done now so that we can really make the most of next year and the following year with the support of Northern Star.“

“The additional regional work up the hill from (Zackly) at Jupiter has really reconsidered what that whole region means,” adds Bojanjac.

“It may be that Zackly’s only a part of a much bigger picture there.”

Alongside its investment in Alaska Range, Northern Star is also PXX’s largest shareholder with a stake of more than 14%, alongside fellow instos like the Ruffer Gold Fund and Lundin. With 35km of strike and rich in copper, Alaska Range is very much a different proposition to Pogo’s high grade underground gold, showing Northern Star is not just looking for a bolt-on asset.

It’s aim is to find something that stands on its own as a development, something that would very much move the needle for PolarX.

Nevada gold rush

That deal with Northern Star has opened the floodgates for PolarX also in Nevada, where its Humboldt Range project sits in the centre of one of the world’s best emerging gold fields.

A $5 million placement at 1.5c a share in early September will be largely used to give some attention to Humboldt Range, originally secured in 2021.

Mined until 1927, the project had been family-owned since 1950.

But it sits just a stone’s throw at one end from Integra Resources’ 5Moz Florida Canyon mine, with maiden drilling by PXX at the Star Canyon prospect hitting a headline 9.1m at 124.36g/t gold and 48.6g/t silver. That’s high grade in anyone’s book.

It stands out like a sore thumb in a region known, largely, for its low grade heap leach operations, which tend to grade, like Florida Canyon, at around 0.4g/t.

To the south of the Fourth of July claims sit Solidus Resources’ Spring Valley, a heap leach project due for completion this year, and silver giant Coeur Mining’s 400Moz silver and 3Moz gold Rochester mine, also a heap leach. Not too further flung is SSR Mining’s 190,000ozpa Marigold mine.

A channel cut at the Golden Staircase prospect collected 69m of rock at 1.1g/t gold and 7.65g/t silver, an indication of the attractive targets PolarX now has the cash to properly follow up.

The turn in the gold price, now nudging US$4000/oz, has reinforced PXX’s decision to hold the project for so long.

“We got into that project when gold was maybe 1500 bucks an ounce,” Bojanjac said.

“So it’s certainly paying off now and we’ve never really given it a shake but now we’re ready to drill it and the neighbours around us have done things. They’re making money next door, literally a mile down the hill.

“There’s a brand new one starting up immediately south of us as well. So the region is really red hot at the moment. We’re keen to get amongst that because I think for most people they’ve forgotten what we’ve got in Nevada.”

Post-raising, PolarX is planning 2000m of drilling at Star Peak before flying aeromagnetics once winter sets in.

Importantly, Berton said the company has been consistently seeing grades of around 1.1g/t in sampling from its Black Canyon claims.

“What you see there is there’s a lot of hairline veins and siliceous alteration throughout there, which is all evidence of this epithermal overprint of the rhyolite unit,” Berton, a PhD trained structural geologist, said.

“Which gives you an indication that there’s potential for some of these zones to be quite saturated with grades that are above half a gram.

“Why I point out half a gram is that’s the best of the average grades that you seem to get in our neighbours and they’re all very economic at those grades.

“So if we’re getting 1-1.1g/t, whilst it might appear as a modest grade in many parts of Western Australia, it’s something that will really work in Nevada.”

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While PolarX is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.