Nova Minerals Ltd. Feb. 28 announced the completion of a scoping study that provides a first glimpse of the economics and parameters of developing a mine at the Korbel Main deposit on the company's Estelle gold property in Alaska.

"The company is pleased to announce the strong, positive results of the scoping study which was focused on Korbel Main only to determine whether the resource defined at the deposit to date can support a potentially viable stand-alone starter operation," said Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen.

According to this "snapshot in time" study, a mine at Korbel would produce 1.96 million ounces of gold over an initial 15 years.

At a US$1,750/oz gold price, the mine outlined in the study is forecast to generate a pre-tax net present value (5% discount) of US$381 million and an internal rate of return of 20.4%.

At all-in sustaining costs of $1,120/oz of gold produced over the life of the mine, this operation would pay back the estimated US$424 million of preproduction capital costs to develop the mine in around three years.

The open pit operation outlined in this study would mine 195 million metric tons of ore from the Korbel Main deposit averaging 0.41 grams per metric ton, which would be upgraded to 0.7 g/t gold with an ore sorter before being fed into the mill.

"Key drivers for these robust returns are the geometry and nature of mineralization within these massive IRGS (intrusive-related gold system) ore bodies, which start at surface to allow open pit mining with a very low strip ratio, particularly important in the early payback years, as well as being readily amenable to ore sorting allowing for significant upgrading of ore feed to mill," Gerteisen said.

Currently, the Korbel Main deposit hosts a total of 286 metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant indicated resources averaging 0.3 g/t (3 million oz) gold, plus 583 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.3 g/t (5.1 million oz) gold.

Gerteisen says the scoping study provides a solid foundation for advancing prefeasibility level studies at Estelle, and the company has already identified clear opportunities for improving the gold production and economic parameters of establishing a multi-deposit mine on the district-scale property. This includes expanding and upgrading the current resources at Korbel, along with bringing in the higher-grade gold mineralization identified at RPM into the mine plan.

An early staged deposit about 16 miles south of Korbel., RPM North hosts 23.1 million metric tons of JORC-compliant inferred resource averaging 2 g/t (1.5 million ounces) gold. This resource, which comes to the surface, includes one hole drilled in 2012 and six completed by Nova last year.

This year's program at Estelle is slated to include at least 20,000 meters of drilling to upgrade and expand the RPM resource.

Material handling studies are also being carried out to investigate low-cost options to transport ore from RPM to a central processing facility at Korbel.

Nova Minerals Ltd.

The first of six holes Nova Minerals drilled during its 2021 program at the higher-grade RPM gold deposit at Estelle.

"This year our drill programs and test work are aimed at rapidly converting the current 6.6Mozs of inferred resources at both deposits into higher confidence measured and indicated resources, as well as advancing the high-grade RPM deposit to be included in the next stage PFS," said the Nova Minerals CEO. "We believe the results of the scoping study are a great starting point that demonstrates the technical and economic strengths which come from having a large, bulk tonnage project in a tier-1 location. It's all upside from here."

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Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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