Investors back next-gen Atlantic Canada miners

A bunch of mining juniors that helped focus investor attention on Canada’s Atlantic provinces at Resourcing Tomorrow 2025 have clearly kept markets positively engaged over the past 12 months.

EDM Resources, which has seen its share price climb more than 560% in that time (to July 7 close), Atlas Salt (up circa-300%), Canadian Copper (235%), Northcliff Resources (177%) and Firefly Metals (56%) have led the non-gold Atlantic Canada charge. They’re pushing forward an eclectic mix of zinc, tungsten, salt and copper projects in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Gold companies such as Nexgold Mining Corp, New Found Gold, Galway Metals and Australia’s St Barbara have experienced share-price turbulence this year, not surprising given the extremely volatile gold price, but are ahead of where they were this time last year.

Again, they’re moving projects forward at a good pace in an international permitting and approval environment that has shifted. Competition among states, provinces and countries for resources and downstream investment has brought a greater focus on regulatory efficiency.

New Brunswick’s government put out its Comprehensive Minerals Strategy in the lead up to Resourcing Tomorrow 2025, saying the province was seeing new exploration that suggested its “mineral potential remains underexplored and highly aligned with emerging global priorities”.

“By enhancing efficiency and reducing timelines New Brunswick is well positioned to reinforce its competitiveness as a destination for mineral investment,” the strategy said.

Similarly, a Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Energy and Mines report said the province’s cC$6 billion mining sector was seeing good growth and diversification. Historically dominated by iron ore production and Voisey’s Bay nickel, it was witnessing a modern-day gold rush and other significant projects such as Atlas Salt’s proposed US$430 million Great Atlantic underground salt mine.

Newfoundland and Labrador director of mineral development Keith Bradbury said last month the province had 11 active mines, six projects either in or released from environmental assessment and “numerous other advancing projects with economic studies and/or NI 43-101 resource statements”.

“We are ready to collaborate for the benefit of our province, our partners, our companies and investors,” Bradbury said.

Nova Scotia, which has been a laggard, has established a government “Large Industrial File Team” to review mining and other project applications. NexGold Mining Corp CEO Kevin Bullock says the province has “really stepped up”. 

“We’ve had a very, very significant shift in the process,” he said in an interview in May. NexGold is close making a final investment decision on its proposed C$400-450 million Goldboro gold project 175 km northeast of Halifax. “It coincides with the change of government in the US and the commitment from countries, not just Canada, to develop their own resources. The province made mining a commitment and formed a group called LIFT to bridge the gap between regulators and proponents to get things done faster and make it more efficient without taking away from any of the safety and environmental concerns.

“We got most of our permits in the last year after years of banging our head. It was horrible. And they’re fixing it. So hats off to the regulator, the government and the premier [Tim Houston] for really pushing for development in the province.”

EDM Resources CEO Mark Haywood had no problem labelling Nova Scotia, where the company is closing on a C$30-40 million restart of the past-producing Scotia zinc mine, a “tier one jurisdiction” in a recent interview. The company’s TSXV stock reboot over the past year has coincided with a climbing zinc price. Haywood says gypsum, silver, gold and lead shape as handy byproducts. A cUS$50m gypsum offtake deal with an unnamed party, for half planned Scotia gypsum output, signified a “$100 million gypsum offtake [opportunity]”.

“We mine through it to get to the zinc and lead,” he said.

“Previously the operation just threw it on the waste dump.”

Haywood said this week the latest quarter was a “transformational period” for the company, with its US OTCQB listing adding to permitting, financing and project development progress.

“With the Fisheries Act Authorisation process progressing well and preparations for the updated pre-feasibility study advancing we believe EDM is increasingly well positioned to advance the Scotia mine toward a production decision,” he said.

In New Brunswick, Northcliff Resources is updating a 2013 feasibility study on “one of the world’s most significant tungsten resources” at Sisson, about 100km northwest of Fredericton, which has earned national Nation Building Project status from Canada’s Major Projects Office.

Established under a bill passed by Canada’s parliament in June 2025, the office was set up to recognise projects of national interest and facilitate development through better coordination of project proponents, indigenous peoples, investors and all levels of government. Northcliff has secured up to C$29 million of non-dilutive financing in the form of US Department of Defense and Natural Resources Canada program funding aimed at addressing gaps in North American defence and other strategic supply chains.

Tungsten has a range of critical applications in cutting tools, steel, military munitions and protective equipment. Global tungsten supply is highly concentrated in China.

“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,” says CEO Andrew Ing.

The public funding was being used to “update the project economics and finalise details of the mine development plan, secure the remaining permits and obtain the required authorisations to accelerate the Sisson project toward a construction decision”.

Atlas Salt says it can also head off a domestic production shortfall with a project that ticks a lot of geological and logistics boxes. CEO Nolan Peterson says Great Atlantic’s natural and infrastructure advantages, including access to hydro power, can help it “turn this part of Newfoundland into an economic powerhouse”.

“There hasn't been a new salt mine built in North America in 25 years because it’s really hard to make money on a new salt deposit,” Peterson says.

“But a lot of the critical infrastructure already exists where we are in St George's near Stephenville, including a deepwater port that's open year-round and ice-free permitted, and it allows us in theory to move our product to key markets [including the US and Canadian east coast].

“Most [current mines] in North America are 50-to-100 years old. Our deposit has 25 years in a feasibility study in reserve and then another 50 years of life already defined in additional resource defined by drilling. So we’re looking at 75 years’ potential mine life. That’s two or three generations of wealth in a region that is not used to that.

“We’re really relishing the opportunity to bring that generational wealth and really benefit from the infrastructure and the strategic location that Newfoundland brings.”

Significant copper projects in Newfoundland and Labrador – Firefly Metals’ Green Bay – and New Brunswick – Canadian Copper’s Murray Brook in the famed Bathurst Mining Camp – also have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of existing mine and other infrastructure as cost, permitting and schedule tailwinds.

Firefly’s Australian CEO Darren Cooke told a recent mining investment forum in Quebec City location had never been more important at a time when markets, governments and of course miners were scrambling to turn in-ground resources into resilient links in strategic supply chains.

“We’re very conscious as miners that we are competing globally for capital and investment in mining,” Cooke said.

“Investors want a business case. They’ve got the choice. They can invest in biotech. They can invest in technology. They can invest in all sorts of industries. One of the key criteria they really look for is jurisdiction and potential upside.

 “Newfoundland and Labrador consistently ranks in the top 10 of anywhere in the world in terms of the government, the policy perception, the permitting and also the exploration upside and that is a huge feather in the cap of the province.

“It even ranks higher now than Western Australia which is a traditional global powerhouse in mining and it ranks a lot better than the majority of provinces in Canada.

“There’s great infrastructure available. Hydro power is a huge benefit.

“The permitting is a well-established process and  collaborative and we’ve been managed to get permitted and released from our environmental assessment in 45 days. It took me longer to get drill programs approved in Ontario.

“It really speaks to the power of the community support that we have for mining in Newfoundland.”

Canadian Copper CEO Simon Quick said this week the company’s connection over the past two years of its flagship Murray Brook copper-zinc-lead-silver deposit with an established and permitted processing facility at Caribou, 10km away, had pushed the junior past peers in a race to access favourable copper and zinc markets and build scale.

This would give it a platform to leverage not only its operating position but a jurisdiction with a valuable geological and mining talent endowment and “a good regulatory environment to build projects”.

“It’s a highly capital efficient [project] – roughly $65 million to build – but more importantly, straightforward to develop in that we’re hoping to start construction in 2027 and then be in production in 2028,” he said.

“And I think that’s important.

“When you look at the Canadian jurisdiction there’s not too many base metal minds that can fit that time horizon, take advantage of these commodity prices with the footprint that we’re talking about.

“We’ll now control the only permitted tailings and concentrator plant in New Brunswick ... [and] across that province there’s lots of smaller deposits that could potentially be fed into this plant. That will give us a foundational footprint to [add] years to the mine life through acquisitions and other exploration success.

“We’ve got a provincial and federal government very keen on critical minerals supply.

“So we’ve timed this well”.