Trilogy Metals Advances 5.6% CuEq Arctic Copper Project in Alaska | Tony Giardini

Trilogy Metals (NYSE American: TMQ; TSX: TMQ) CEO Tony Giardini joins Kitco Mining’s Investment Trends at PDAC 2026 to discuss renewed momentum around the Arctic copper project in Alaska’s Ambler mining district following recent permitting developments and growing U.S. government support for domestic critical minerals. The Arctic deposit hosts about 50 million tonnes grading roughly 5.6% copper equivalent, a high-grade volcanic massive sulfide system containing copper, zinc, silver, gold, and lead. “Right now it’s about, on a copper equivalent basis, it’s 5.6% copper equivalent,” Giardini said.

Giardini said recent policy developments could help unlock the long-delayed Ambler Access Road, which is critical to developing the district. Trilogy expects to begin the mine permitting process within the next couple of months while preparing a 2026 field program targeting 5,000 to 8,000 meters of drilling. The company is also advancing a definitive feasibility study at the asset level and expects to close a $35.6 million U.S. government investment for a 10% stake announced in October 2025. “We’ve got these two great deposits, Arctic and Bornite, which really set us apart from other development projects in the state of Alaska,” he said.

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 To learn more about Trilogy Metals, visit:
 https://trilogymetals.com/

00:29 - Arctic Copper Deposit Overview and 5.6% CuEq Grade
02:48 - South32 Joint Venture and Ambler Metals Partnership
06:33 - Recent Breakthrough on Ambler Access Road
08:30 - 2026 Field Season Plans and Next Project Steps
12:16 - $35.6M U.S. Government Investment in Trilogy
15:14 - Major Shareholders and Ownership Structure
19:09 - Financing Options and Precious Metals Streaming
21:11 - 2026 Catalysts and Project Outlook
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello and welcome to Kitco Mining with me Paul Harris here at the 2026 PDAC in Toronto, Canada. Today we're talking about copper development in Alaska and I'm pleased to be joined by Tony Giardini, CEO of Trilogy Medals, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange America Market and the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticket TMQ. Tony, welcome to Kitco. Paul, thanks for having me. You got the pattern down perfectly. A lot of practice there, and thank you very much for helping him out with your surname. I think it's been fair to say it's been an up and down few years for the company with the Arctic Copper Project in central Alaska with the permitting of the Amber Access Road on again, off again, on again, off again. Before we get to that, tell us a little bit about the Arctic project and how much copper and other metals it contains.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Yeah, so so Arctic is actually a volcanic massive sulfide deposit. So it's actually a copper, zinc, silver, gold, lead deposit. And what's really um impressive about the Arctic project and what differentiates it from pretty much any other project out there right now is the the grade and the size in terms of a VMS. So right now it's about on a copper equivalent basis, it's 5.6% copper equivalent. And that's partly due to the high uh silver and gold prices. And uh the uh can the the the the size of a Yor body is about 50 million uh uh 50 million tons. So that would based on projected 10,000 ton per day operations run for about 13 to 14 years, but what's really key to the district is the prospectivity in terms of exploration.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Okay. You became CEO in 2020. What what attracted you to the position?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

I'd actually been involved with the company since it was spun out of Nova Gold in twenty and twelve. I had been on the board in uh from 2012 to 2020, and when I joined as the CEO in 2020, it was really because I had the strong belief in the quality of the underlying deposit. And we were at that point uh very close to unlocking the district. So we were uh expecting the permits to be issued by the federal government for the road to the state of Alaska, an agency of the state of Alaska. We had uh just uh uh completed uh investment by South 32 in terms of forming a JV in the district, and we had put a management team together at the JV. So all of the pieces were coming together. And I I joined in 2020 on the expectation that I was looking at a five-year uh commitment, uh, expecting that you know by this time we would be in production, but unfortunately we ran into the headwinds that is uh politics and permitting in Alaska, the great state of Alaska, the United States.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

We're gonna touch on that in just a moment. As you mentioned, uh this the project is uh held in Ambler Metals, which is that joint venture with South 32. Has it been difficult managing that relationship given all the ups and downs you've had to face on the on the road permitting?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, I've been in the space for roughly uh 30 years. I've been involved in a lot of joint ventures, and I have to say that South 32 is a phenomenal partner. We're very fortunate to have them as a partner. So the quality of a relationship is very high and very strong. And I would say we're very aligned on what we're seeing in terms of a future of a project. I would also point out that you know Trilogy as a US market cap right now is about$750 million, and the cumulative investment that South 32 made to in the asset and the JV, etc., is about$200 million. So they are the smart money in the transaction. They came into the transaction early, they believed in the project, and they've been phenomenal partners. So I I think the working relationship with South 32 has been really, really positive. I think where there's a difference is that they're a big multinational, they have lots of different operations. Our focus is solely on the Ambler mining district, and so sometimes we're probably a bit more anxious in terms of moving things forward on an expeditive basis.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah, a bigger company can be more patient sometimes. Okay, well let's turn to the road. Um you you mentioned you were looking at a perhaps a five-year time frame to get into production, so I'm assuming that it was quite a surprise some of the headwinds you've run into.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, so you know the the the interesting thing about this district, it was discovered in the 1950s, and uh so over a 70-year time period there's been approximately 210,000 meters drilled. So on average that's about 3,000 meters a year. That's not a lot. There was it would it we it would never have been in our hands had there been this infrastructure put in place. And they were forecasting in 1980 a pathway to develop the road. It wasn't until 2015 under the Obama administration that the state of Alaska started to permit the road with a view of putting that infrastructure in place. And so by 2020, towards um I think July of 2020, that's when the Trump administration issued the record of decision on the road that allowed the road to move forward. So once the election happened in November of 2020 uh uh uh 2020 uh 2020, that's when we saw the situation not really change because I think the Biden administration was very supportive of critical metals, but I think we just got caught up in the time frame of other politics and elections, and the litigation sort of uh uh took the wind out of our sails. So we were sort of rudderless for a period of roughly three years, and it meant that people just lost uh interest in the story.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Okay, as part of the permitting, you're you're in that sort of federal NEPA process. A key aspect is the sort of 404 wetlands permit. Uh you count with the support of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and with the NANA first uh sorry, the Native American group there. So the all all these things seem to be positive. So so what ended up blocking the the permitting of the road?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Well, what what happened was that uh there was a lawsuit that had been filed against uh the issuance of a permit, and uh the Department of Interior, BLM, felt that incremental work needed to be done in terms of supplemental EIS. That work was carried out uh from uh 2021 through to uh from sorry, 2022 through to uh 2023, uh and then they came up with a decision in early 24, and unfortunately they chose what was called a no action decision. And and what I would say, Paul, is that when they made that decision, it was in April of 2024. The election in 2024 was in November. So I I don't want to say politics dominated the narrative, but I have to believe it, it was part and parcel of a process. So the the big thing has happened since then is that President Trump has effectively reinstated the record of decision uh from 2020, and he's been able to do it uh through uh legislation that exists solely in the state of Alaska 1106, where he was able to reinstate that permit under a presidential decree that from what we understand can't be overturned. So that's really important in terms of setting the narrative. Where do we go from here? The other big news, and it just came out just over a week ago, is that the Department of Interior BLM um repealed what's called the public land order 5150. And what that uh land order covers, it covers all of a land adjacent to the Dalton Highway, which is a road that runs north-south in the state of Alaska. And why it's important to us, is because it covers about 25 miles of our road, and that is the only federal land involved in our road. So the road, the Ambler Access Road is 211 miles. The first 25 miles were under federal purview. Now they're going to become under state purview if they become uh selected by the state of Alaska. So what that does, it will take it right out of the federal permitting process. We still will have to get a 404 wetlands permit, but that will be really the only major permit that will be required in terms of the the mineslash road. So uh I think there's a lot, certainly a lot more certainty in terms of where the road is going, and we feel very positive about uh that. So I I don't want to say it's behind us 100% because you never know with these things, but I feel like we're in a much better position than we were even when the permit was issued originally in 2020.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

I mean that that seems to be quite a neat solution to some of the uh the issues the road access has faced. So um with that now uh in in place, what what are the sort of next key steps or milestones for the road?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, I think um I I think it it's been interesting to be at this conference and to be at the BMO conference uh last week, and one of the things that happens is, you know, as I said earlier earlier, where we're stuck in the situation where we feel like we've sort of been caught up in something that we didn't have much control over, we've lost sight of what the real prize is, and what the real prize is the district potential in the Ambler mining district. So I mentioned that uh Arctic has, you know, 50 million tons gradient, 5.6 percent copper equivalent. We have a second deposit, Bornite, which is about 208 million tons, about 1.5 percent, but within that there's uh roughly 50 million tons that it's close to 3%. So we've got this great uh we've we've got these two great deposits, Arctic and Bornite, which really set us apart from other development projects in the state of Alaska. So where things are going next is we expect to start the permitting process on the mine. Hopefully that will be within the next couple of months, and we should have some announcements out with respect to where we're going on that. We have a field program uh that we'll be doing uh starting in May. Uh the season is short in in Alaska, and because we don't have road access right now, you have to fly in, fly out, it's helicopter supported. So it runs from May to September. We're hoping to drill somewhere between five and eight thousand meters. Uh so we'll be doing that. We expect to start the definitive feasibility study at the asset level. We already have a feasibility study from a trilogy level, but we expect to have a definitive feasibility at the asset level, so that will commence. And what we're trying to do is to position ourselves so that we're in a uh uh we're in the place to put uh make an investment decision sometime in early 2028. So that's how we're looking at things. We'll also be working very closely with the communities in and around uh where uh the proposed mine would be located and really consulting in terms of you know the the road and moving that forward. So there's a lot of activities that we expect to uh take on. We should have a bit of an updated resource on our track because some drilling had been done previously that hadn't been incorporated in the in that resource. And then we're looking at uh uh an updated uh uh uh preliminary economic assessment on the Bornite deposit where we take uh into consideration higher commodity prices, but also uh the fact that we could put more material through the mill by having a small open pit there. So lots of wood to chop over the next uh several months and uh you know we're very excited about everything as moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

It sounds like you're gonna be very busy with the mine permitting. Will you be in that s the Fast 41 process, which uh in addition to transparency and coordination amongst the various different agencies, puts in a fixed timescale for everything to go through the process?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

That's a plan. Uh I mean we're working together with uh South 32, and South 32 has a strong permitting team. In fact, I think Hermosa was the first project that went through FAST 41. So our expectation is that that's the path that we want to look at, and we see FAST 41 taking between 18 and 24 months. The key to that program, of course, is that you have to dot the I's and cross the T's and be ready to go when you go because those timelines are pretty quick and there's a lot of things that need to get done. So we've been doing a lot of preparatory work to put ourselves in that position. We've beefed up the team at the uh JV, uh, bringing in some real expertise that's associated with uh Alaska permitine. So we feel we're well positioned to move forward. And I I think the size and scale of the project, um, you could argue that you could do an environmental assessment in in instead of an environmental impact study, but we're gonna actually choose uh the latter and we're gonna focus on an EIS because it's more comprehensive and I think it will better capture the narrative in terms of dealing with any potential issues.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Okay. Now timing is often very, very important or critical in um uh mine development, and the critical minerals narrative, particularly for copper, has seen renewed interest in the project, particularly in the White House, and the desire to get things moving, and that's gone to the extent of federal investment in the in the company. Um in October last year, October 2025, the Trump administration announced a 35.6 million US dollar investment into the company uh for a 10% stake. Uh how much of a surprise was that?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Well, so the uh the just just to clarify, the investment is absolutely, as you said, 10%. But the the way that investment works is that the US government through the Department of War would uh subscribe for 5% equity in trilogy directly. That's about$17.5 million, and the other 5% would be acquiring a 5% stake that South 32 holds in trilogy. So South 32 right now has about 11% stake, so that 11% stake will decrease to six percent, and uh five percent will go to the state at the same terms that we'll be selling equity at uh the trilogy level. So it's not trilogy itself that's issuing 10%. Although you're absolutely correct, the U.S. government will have 10%, it's just where it comes from. The money nonetheless is all going to go into the JV, and we're expecting this transaction to close at the the end of March. And you know what I would say, Paul, is this. Um we didn't go knocking on the federal uh government door. They came to us and they said they wanted to work with us to advance this project. And I would say it wasn't uh really about the quantum of the investment because at the end of the day we could raise, you know, our share of that 17.5 million dollars quite easily if we needed to. It was about having the federal government giving its stamp of approval and saying they want to partner with us and hopefully help us in terms of looking at the financing not just for the road but for the mine and really giving us the support that we need to advance a project. I don't want to say on an expedite basis, but advance a project and give it the visibility that it needs. And so that that's a really exciting part, and there there haven't been a lot of well at the time there hadn't been a lot of those investments. There were only three MP materials, lithium of America's and and now ourselves. So we feel like we're well positioned. We feel like, you know, given that it's a copper story, critical metal story that not just captures copper but zinc and other critical metals, it it it it it really speaks to the quality of our deposit and the potential in the district. How is it having the U.S. government as a shareholder? No pressure? Um, you know, we don't have them as a shareholder yet. The deal's gonna close at the end of March. My expectation is that they will be a good shareholder. The agreement with the DOW provides that they can appoint an independent director to sit on the board, and we expect that that director will be quite beneficial to us in terms of you know giving us the support and visibility that we need uh through the federal government to ensure that we're able to advance a project uh on a timeline that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

You've also got some uh big uh other other investors are very big. You mentioned Nova Gold, Paulson's a big investor in Novigold, they're a big investor with you. Um tell us who else is invested in and supporting the company.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Yeah, so the the biggest shareholder uh in the company is Electrum, and Electrum is also the largest shareholder in Nova Gold. Um their shareholding came from when this was spun out of uh Nova Gold in 2012, and it's uh the Electrum fund out of New York. They've been very patient, they've been very supportive shareholders. They don't have any board representation, but we have a very strong relationship with Tom Kaplan and the and the team at Electrum. And I mean we couldn't be happier to have them as our anchor shareholder. Poulson was in the story for a long time. In fact, they also got their stake on the spin out in 2012. They exited the investment in uh October of last year when uh we had, you know, the big liquidity event as a result of the DOW investment. So they sold their stake, so they're no longer in the story, but they were in the story for 13 years. Uh we have an ETF that owns about 10% of a stock. Then there's a number of other funds that, you know, each community owned three, four, five percent of a stock. And then management itself on and the board on a fully diluted basis, uh, we own fifteen percent of a stock. So I like to say that we're very aligned with shareholders in terms of uh you know our ownership stake in ensuring that the project advances uh uh uh the way we hope it will.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Okay. Now um the the the the mineral resource you have there and the the economic studies that they were you know calculated or undertaken you know a good few years ago. The critical minerals narrative has evolved since then. Are there other sort of niche critical minerals that you might have there that you're perhaps taking a look back to see, okay, we might have this, we might have that. Would that potentially be economic as well?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Yeah, so you know when I talk about Arctic, I talk about it on a hundred percent basis. We own fifty percent. But just to give everybody a bit of a sense of what Arctic is, I I mentioned the 5.6%. I keep coming back to that because there aren't that many deposits like this open PIF. Right now, the MPV on that project at spot is between, on an after-tax basis, is between four and four and a half billion dollars. Uh and it's just a phenomenal investment which has um a very low uh capital intensity of around ten thousand dollars per copper equivalent ton. That's in the low quartile, or low first quartile in terms of that. Uh so when we look at the other men minerals that are in the district, so just north of us is the Red Dog Mine, it's the largest mine in the world. They are a big producer of germanium, which is used in military uh applications, and we know that there's germanium in our district as well, so that's another metal that we'll be looking at. Uh the Bornite deposit, uh, even though we don't have a resource that we can declare, I mean the historic resource there indicated that there was 88 million pounds of cobalt, so it makes it one of the larger cobalt inferred resources in the the U.S. So that's one of the things that's also of interest, obviously given the importance of that metal for a number of different applications. And then we expect there's other rare earth elements in the district. And I think the key is that the just the lack of drilling that has happened, although 2,000 210,000 meters sounds like a lot, if you compare it to the great VMS districts in the world, whether it's Flim Flon, Naranda, Hokuruku, uh, or uh Snow Lake, Bathurst, we've just scratched the surface. Many of those districts have had well over three million meters drilled, and we've had a poultry 210,000 meters. So we already have a 50 million uh ton resource at Arctic, and so our story is about really advancing uh the exploration potential in the district. And what we're hoping is that like those great VMS districts, we'll have a district that will continue not just for 15 years but for 50 years and 60 years and 70 years.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

So that's a potential that we're looking to unlock. Okay. Now, Tony, you mentioned uh you're working towards the potential to make a final investment decision in uh late or about two years' time, 2028. Um in terms so I imagine you're starting to look about the the financing possibilities for that. Obviously, with higher metals prices, that perhaps opens up new avenues uh to explore. And recently, of course, we saw a big silver stream financing on a copper project. Do you see similar potential at Arctic?

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Oh, there's absolutely the potential. I mean, what what happens with these deposits is the closer you get to the making that production decision and commencing construction, the more de-risked the project is and the more you're probably able to garner from looking at uh optionality associated with streams uh for precious metals. And right now the precious metal component of the deposit is about 25 percent. So when we did the feasibility study back in uh 2023, uh the the the the metals were uh copper first at 55 percent, zinc was 23 percent, and then the precious metals were I think total of 10 percent. Now it's flipped a little bit. Uh you know, copper is still roughly 55 percent, uh zinc is I think sixteen to fifteen percent, and the precious metals are roughly twenty-five percent. So th the the dynamics have changed uh tremendously, and when you look at streaming transactions, even though you know you there's lots of bespoke nature attached to those transactions, but we're in a very strong position because there's lots of optionality in the district in terms of future exploration, having, you know, silver production, 2.8 million ounces annually over that, the the life of mine, plus having gold production, I think gives us lots of options to look at. And then having the U.S. government as a shareholder in trilogy, I think opens up a door to look at project financing and other solutions. And so I feel really confident when I look at the amount of capital that trilogy would need to raise to fund its share, that we got a host of options to advance a project uh quite easily, certainly in this metal price environment.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Okay. Well, Tony, we've we've covered a lot of ground in our conversation. What are some of the key catalysts that our viewers should be watching out for from trilogy this year?

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Yeah, and I I think you know, we're gonna look to close the uh DOW investment shortly. We expect to start the permitting process, we're gonna be on the ground, so there's gonna be some drill results coming out later this year. Uh we expect to continue to, you know, de-risk a project and have some news on the resource and look at this PEA study that we talked about and kick off the definitive feasibility study at the asset level. I think those are all of the things that we'll be looking at. And then, you know, as the DOW gets more involved in the project, we'll we'll have some discussions about that. And we'll be looking at the greater district and see whether there are opportunities there are. I think there's a a lot for us to do. You'll you you know your uh viewers will know that yesterday a big transaction was announced in the space. Arizona Sonora was acquired by uh HUD Bay. And so that's you know one less uh domestic uh copper producer in the U.S. So there's scarcity value associated uh with these projects and you know we're in a great position where as I said before I don't think there's another project out there that has 5.6% copper equivalent. So we've got a lot of stuff to do but we want to make sure that story is told. That's the big push for us uh in 2026.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Well it's great to hear that things are really starting to get interesting in a in a very positive way. Trilogy Metals trades on the New York Stock Exchange American market and the TSX under the ticket TMQ. Tony Giardini thank you very much for joining me today. Paul thanks for having us and we have a lot more to come from the 2026 Prospectors and Developers Association Conference in Toronto so stick around and hit that subscribe button. I'm Paul Harris and this is Kiko Mining