PolarX is unusual in that its largest shareholder is the ASX’s leading gold producer, Northern Star Resources, a company not typically known for investing in juniors.

Northern Star holds 16% of PolarX and even underwrote its A$5 million entitlement offer a year ago.

It makes sense for Northern Star to be interested in PolarX given it operates the Pogo gold mine in Alaska, the same US state that is home to PolarX’s flagship Alaska Range project.

Could Northern Star’s stake indicate potential future involvement in the Alaska Range project? PolarX executive chairman Mark Bojanjac has alluded to it in the past, but only time will tell.

And it’s not just Northern Star. PolarX has a standout register for a company with a market capitalisation of just A$16.6 million.

Ruffer, U.S. Global and the Lundin family also hold stakes in the junior.

Copper and gold with a silver sweetener

Alaska Range has a resource of 269,000 tonnes, or 595 million pounds, of copper, 213,000 ounces of gold and 3.13 million ounces of silver.

It comprises a measured, indicated and inferred 7.2 million tonnes at 3.1% copper and 6.5 grams per tonne silver at Caribou Dome and 4Mt at 1.1% copper, 1.6g/t gold and 12.6g/t silver at Zackly.

A 2024 scoping study outlined capital costs of US$147 million for a 9.5-year operation starting with Caribou Dome at a throughput rate of 750,000 tonnes per annum followed by 600,000tpa from Zackly.

Flotation returned recoveries of 90% copper, 79% gold and 80% silver at Zackly, and 87.9% copper and 70% silver at Caribou Dome.

C1 cash costs would be a competitive US$1.36 per pound of copper, including gold and silver credits, for an operating margin of 55%.

The study showed life-of-mine revenue would be almost US$1.5 billion with total EBITDA of US$825 million.

The project has a pre-tax net present value of US$406 million, an internal rate of return of 73.9% and a payback period of 1.6 years.

Those figures were based on metal prices of US$8500/t of copper, US$1900/oz of gold and US$25/oz of silver, all well below current prices of around US$9500/t copper, US$2900/oz gold and US$32/oz silver.

“All of that, if you recalculate today, goes straight to bottom line,” Bojanjac said.

“Okay, capex has probably crept up a bit with inflation in a year as well, but it’s not capital expenditure-sensitive at all.”

The biggest upside PolarX sees is to add depth at Caribou Dome.

Existing drilling includes mineralised intercepts 150m below the current resource and it has been established that adding an extra 2Mt of underground ore could add US$130 million to the NPV.

Some deeper drilling is being planned for the upcoming field season, which kicks off from around late April.

The study also indicated that every year of material from Zackly added to the mine plan could add US$21 million to the NPV.

“There’s a lot of unfinished business over at Zackly as well,” Bojanjac said.

“We haven’t drilled that for two years now, but there are hits of 50m at 3g/t from surface that need following up – and if you drilled that in WA, you’d be a A$300 million company.

“There’s about 25km between Zackly and Caribou, where we own all the tenure between it and none of it has ever seen a drill hole, so I’ve got no doubt this is a little like starting with two potential mines in Kalgoorlie to Coolgardie and owning all of it – this thing will run for 20, 30, 50 years over time.”

Permitting will also be easier than it once was with US president Donald Trump promising to fast-track approvals for resources projects.

“Literally, day one, when Trump was inaugurated, there was a 20-page complete reversal of all of the environmental and permitting constraints for the last 20 years, so it has freed things up in a big way. I think his focus is largely oil and gas, but hey, I’ll take it,” Bojanjac said.

PolarX is also planning to drill the Humboldt Range gold project in Nevada this year.

The northern end of Humboldt Range is less than 3km from the operating 5Moz Florida Canyon mine, while the Rochester silver-gold mine and the 4Moz Spring Valley gold project sit to the south.

The project features a 3.5km-long soil anomaly but has never had a drill hole as it’s been privately owned for more than a century.

“If we can prove something up, we’ve got a lot of flexibility there to cut deals with neighbours without having to build anything,” Bojanjac said.

“The plan is, get our teeth into Alaska, roll straight out of that, and then do Nevada before Christmas, and that should be a pretty good year for us.”