This article is a sponsored feature from Mining.com.au partner Albright Metals. It is not financial advice. Talk to a registered financial expert before making investment decisions.
Albright Metals (ASX:ABR) is positioning itself as a dual-commodity player in New Brunswick, Canada, advancing its flagship Golden Pike Gold-Antimony Project in one of North America’s most supportive emerging mining jurisdictions.
CEO Greg Hill says the project’s combination of a defined gold deposit and ‘high-grade’ antimony occurrences sets Albright apart.
“Our project has a known gold deposit on it, which we’re aiming to develop, but we also have these occurrences of antimony which makes it even more exciting.”
Albright’s current exploration program is designed to unlock both gold and antimony potential, aligning with global demand for precious and critical minerals while benefiting from New Brunswick’s increasingly pro-mining stance.
Golden Pike Project: Unlocking gold and antimony
Hill says Golden Pike was originally discovered in the 1990s, and was historically focused on the Vail Road Gold Deposit, which is the primary gold occurrence.
“Vail Road is a near-surface, high-grade gold deposit, orogenic in nature, and consists of a number of mineralised quartz carbonate vein systems,” Hill says.
Vail Road was drilled extensively until around 2008, with close to 20,000m completed. It currently has a foreign estimate of 214.8 thousand tonnes @ 9.6 grams per tonne gold for 66,300 ounces. The foreign estimate was completed in 2011, using a long-term gold price of US$1,200 ($1,658) per ounce, with a cut-off grade of 5g/t gold.
The Golden Pike Project is currently optioned to Albright by GLOBEX Mining Enterprises Globex Mining Enterprises Inc (TSX:GMX), with the latter retaining a long-term royalty on the project.
In the meantime, Albright is focused on progressively working through the project, across around 33km2 of claim that includes the gold deposit, with additional gold and antimony prospects.
The Bond Road prospect is where the ‘high-grade’ antimony sits and has yielded surface boulders grading up to 57% antimony. In March 2026, Albright resumed drilling, targeting both Bond Road and Albright Brook for antimony, covering 460m of drilling across three holes. Samples are currently at the laboratory for assaying.
Hill notes that Albright is targeting a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) on the project between July and September 2026.
“We have set an aggressive expectation for the team to get that done,” Hill says.
“That said, we’ve done a lot of work towards that already, with some additional drilling on Vail Road to essentially validate the 20,000m of prior drilling that had been done.
“Our next step is to publish our updated mineral resource estimate (MRE), which will be done under the JORC reporting standard and will essentially build on the NI 43-101 estimate but update that with the latest information and modelling techniques.”
Hill notes that the company will be publishing this MRE within the next few months, as it is a key step toward the PEA. The company’s environmental work and heritage programs are also progressing, as these will feed into the reports as well.
“One of the key questions that we get asked with regards to this project is what the plan is for processing the ore and turning it into gold bars, as New Brunswick itself does not have any operating gold mines at the moment where we could readily process and toll treat our ore,” Hill says.
“Given the grade of the ore is around 9 grams per tonne, we have established a pathway to get that to a base case to an operating gold mine.
“At this stage, we’re looking at doing toll treatment at an existing operation, which is a bit further afield, but the transportation costs are being investigated to create a viable pathway to actually process the ore at a toller.”
New Brunswick: A province reawakening its mining legacy
Hill explains that New Brunswick has a long history of mining and, in previous decades, mining in the province was thriving and accounted for around 7% of gross domestic product. However, due to changes in politics and social changes, the mining industry was scaled back considerably.
The New Brunswick Government has more recently taken an active approach to developing and diversifying the province’s economy, which has long been heavily dependent on forestry.
“Geologically, this part of the world is very prospective for both base metals and precious metals discovery,” Hill says.
“The provincial government now wants to reinvigorate the mining industry, so they’ve taken some positive steps, including the introduction of a critical minerals strategy to develop mining and to create a clear regulatory framework for mining projects to receive approvals and move through development.”
Hill sees the government’s commitment to a strong mining industry in the province as a positive and this means that projects there are also gaining broadening attention from the market.
“Prior to the government taking this more positive approach, there was uncertainty and inconsistency around how projects could get approved, and what sort of compliance and other requirements would be in place,” Hill says.
“Whereas now we have a level of certainty around key processes and a level of certainty around risks. And that is why, together with the favourable geology, New Brunswick is becoming attractive for explorers and mine development companies to actually chase and develop their projects.”
While mining is still gaining pace in New Brunswick, Hill notes that the region has a pretty strong history, especially across antimony and other critical minerals.
“Antimony was previously mined at Lake George, near Fredericton, for many decades. That ended in the 1990s due to low commodity prices, but the region has that history of antimony and, more recently, more companies have come in to reinvigorate exploration.”
Hill points to Northcliff Resources’ (TSX:NCF) Sisson Project, which has received federal assistance and is becoming a project of national significance in Canada as an example of opportunities around critical minerals in New Brunswick.
Sisson is a tungsten-molybdenum project that has attracted significant federal government support and has helped to elevate New Brunswick as a prospective province for critical minerals.
“There’s tungsten, molybdenum, silver, gold, antimony, copper, and other base metals all in the province.”
Precious metal strength meets critical mineral demand
Hill notes that Albright’s Golden Pike Project benefits from both its gold and antimony opportunities.
“For gold, the outlook is still very strong, and we’re seeing major investment banks still calling for gold prices to be higher than US$5,000 an ounce by the end of the year,” Hill says.
With a longer-term bullish outlook for gold, Albright sees significant long-term opportunities, with a project underpinned by gold.
On the antimony front, the metal is more niche but is growing in critical significance across a range of industries.
“The defence applications have received the most airtime due to geopolitics, but the real underlying demand driver is industrial growth and in particular technological advancements,” Hill says.
“It’s a small component across semiconductors, solar panels, batteries, and more, and has somehow flown under the radar for many years.”
Hill says that China has kept the global antimony supply strong over the years but has recently found that primary mine production isn’t enough to keep pace with domestic demand, so we saw China close off the export of antimony back in 2024.
“The driver for that wasn’t the defence strategy, but that they needed it for their industrial base and realised they were going to have a shortage.”
As technology continues to develop and the demand (especially for artificial intelligence) grows, this is feeding into a long-term sustained demand for antimony. This also means that around the world, we’re seeing more and more countries looking to ensure that they are able to grow their own technologies and their own industries and will need to find a secure supply of antimony to feed into these industrial applications.
“The industrial applications will by far exceed the tonnage and value of the defence requirements, but both are equally strategically important for the global technological future,” Hill says.
With China’s export ban currently extended through toward the end of 2026, Hill points to the need to develop new antimony deposits across the Western world.
While the US has been one of the loudest about its need for critical minerals independence, around the world we’re seeing a push to secure critical mineral supply chains and strategic alliances coming together.
Hill notes that in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere, there is a quiet realignment of supply chains for critical minerals.
Resource updates and pathways to development
Hill notes that from an exploration perspective, Albright is almost entirely focused on the Golden Pike Project, but the company does also have some tenements in Australia, with a joint venture with OM Holdings (ASX:OHM), a Singapore-based manganese company. While this is not the company’s primary focus, Hill notes that it’s still an important part of Albright.
With Golden Pike, the updated MRE is a key upcoming milestone and with that, Hill notes, the company will be looking to publish a basic economic assessment, highlighting the transport and processing costs for its ore.
“We’re also going to be doing some basic metallurgical test work to confirm the processability of the ore, which will be happening over the next few months,” Hill says.
Albright Metals is advancing Golden Pike with confidence, underpinned by its defined 66,000-ounce gold deposit and blue-sky potential of ‘high-grade’ antimony.
CEO Greg Hill sees the dual-commodity focus as a unique advantage, positioning the company to develop its gold opportunity while unlocking antimony’s strategic upside. With demand for antimony expected to surprise on the upside, Albright believes it is well placed to help shape New Brunswick into a world-class antimony province.
Write to Amy Rotman at Mining.com.au
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