Northcliff Resources (TSX: NCF) announced the United States Department of Defense has awarded the company a US$15 million (~C$20.7 million) award under the Defense Production Act Title III program to expand tungsten's domestic capacity, sustainment of its critical production and address vulnerability in the critical minerals supply chain in the United States and Canada.
This important non-share dilutive funding will allow Northcliff to advance the Sisson tungsten-molybdenum project in Canada toward a project construction decision. The company has also obtained conditional funding from the Canadian government, pending due diligence, under Natural Resources Canada's global partnerships initiative for up to C$8.2 million (~US$5.9 million) to support the project.
The Sisson project hosts a deposit with the critical mineral tungsten and the strategic mineral molybdenum and is located near tidewater on the southeastern coast of New Brunswick. The Northcliff advanced resource, engineering, environmental and economic studies that culminated in a positive feasibility study in 2013, then progressed the project through provincial and federal environmental assessment and other processes to gain key approvals, expending some C$70 million. The Company developed a detailed work program and is focused on advancing the project through the pre-construction phase.
The American defence funding and the funds from the Canadian government – in total up to ~C$29 million (US$20.9 million) – will be used to update Northcliff's feasibility study as well as support related pre-construction work programs. This work would involve completion of engineering activities and studies needed to satisfy the technical conditions associated with its in-hand environmental approvals and project development workstreams (project finance and offtake sounding), to provide the necessary economic and technical information to support a construction decision.
As a project at the pre-construction phase, the Sisson project is well positioned to help address the demand for tungsten and molybdenum. According to a Geoscience Australia synthesis of individual country rankings, tungsten is among the minerals recognized as most critical by the United States, Japan, Republic of Korea, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, ranking as the fourth-most critical mineral. The United States and its allies currently rely on sources such as China for tungsten. China produces about 80% of the world's tungsten, a supply that lacks pricing transparency causing market disruptions in the past.
If developed, the Sisson Project would become an easily accessible and reliable supplier of tungsten and molybdenum, strengthening and diversifying the supply chain for these metals used in important industrial, electronic, aerospace and defense applications, and new technologies.
Andrew Ing, Northcliff's chairman, president and CEO commented: "Northcliff's aim is to contribute to the efforts to build a resilient North American supply chain and support development of new technologies through becoming a reliable, easily accessible producer of tungsten and molybdenum. We greatly appreciate this strategic financial support by the US Department of Defense and the global partnerships initiative. These funds will be collectively used to update the project economics and finalize details of the mine development plan, secure the remaining permits, and obtain the required authorizations to accelerate the Sisson project toward a construction decision."
The proposed operation in the 2013 feasibility study for the Sisson project is an open pit mine with conventional processing facilities, supplemented by value-added downstream and on-site processing of tungsten concentrates in an ammonium paratungstate (APT) plant. The company plans to update the feasibility study as part of the focused work program described above.
Additional information on Northcliff is available on the website at www.NorthCliffResources.com.
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