Canagold turns New Polaris concentrate into 99%+ antimony metal

Canagold took concentrate from its New Polaris gold-antimony project in northwest British Columbia and, in a Brisbane lab, turned it into physical antimony metal grading over 99% antimony. The process was alkaline sulphide leach followed by electrowinning — dissolve the antimony out of the concentrate, then plate it out as metal using electricity. The leach pulled out 99.7% of the antimony. The feed was the project’s own concentrate, previously reported at 59.1% antimony and 98.3 grams of gold per tonne. This follows the drill results we covered last week, where New Polaris hit bonanza-grade gold and antimony in the same core.

Here is why it matters. Antimony is a critical metal — used in flame retardants, ammunition and batteries — with few mines outside China. Most antimony concentrate has to go overseas to be smelted. Canagold just showed, on a lab bench, that it can take its own concentrate straight to refined metal without that overseas step. That is a real technical milestone for a project that already has a feasibility study behind it. President and COO Garry Biles, who ran Barrick’s high-grade Eskay Creek mine from 1994 to 2002, signs off as the Qualified Person. The market has been paying attention to the antimony angle: the stock rose 34% over three months while the Canadian base-metals peer index rose about 5% — nearly seven times the sector, which says the gain is about this company, not a rising tide.

Now the honest part. This is bench-scale test work, not a pilot plant or a feasibility-level flowsheet. The release does not state sample mass, how many test cycles were run, or whether the result repeats across runs. Reagent consumption, throughput and process economics are all unproven. Crucially, the release does not address what happens to the gold as it moves through the leach-and-electrowinning circuit — and gold is the main metal here. Canagold itself calls the antimony metal “upside potential,” not something built into the 2025 feasibility study yet. From last week’s promises: assays from the remaining nine of the 14-hole program are still pending, the antimony economic study is still underway with no stated date, and the BC environmental assessment remains in review. One standing flag for minority holders — Sun Valley Investments AG holds roughly 42 to 48% of shares, and its beneficial owners aren’t publicly known.

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