Gold miner St Barbara has welcomed improvements to the permitting environment in Nova Scotia, Canada, announcing on Monday that it had withdrawn its Supreme Court appeal over reclamation conditions at the Touquoy mine, while also starting an investigation into re-opening the operation to treat stockpiles.

The government of Nova Scotia recently designated gold as a provincial strategic mineral and created a Large Industrial File Team (LIFT) within the Department of Environment and Climate Change to centralise expertise for large projects. Other recent approvals in the province include the Antrim Gypsum mine and the Goldboro gold project.

St Barbara MD and CEO Andrew Strelein said in a statement that the changes gave the company confidence to step back from its legal challenge.

“We are very encouraged by the significant improvement in the permitting environment in Nova Scotia and, in particular, we have been encouraged by the progress made with the creation of the Large Industrial File Team to pool expertise within the regulator from across its regional offices. As a result, we have withdrawn our Supreme Court appeal that sought formal mediation on reclamation design criteria and commenced an investigation into re-opening Touquoy for treatment of low and medium grade stockpiles left at closure,” he said.

The Touquoy mine, which ceased operations in 2023 after its tailings management facility reached capacity, has about 3.1-million tonnes of low- and medium-grade stockpiles averaging 0.46 g/t gold. The plant has been maintained under “hot care and maintenance” to allow for a potential quick restart.

“Our aspiration is to permit and re-open the site to operate for approximately 15 months of stockpile treatment. The resumption of operations would not impact on TMF reclamation and would, in fact, improve our plans for reclamation of the waste rock dumps - because we originally intended that there would be no remnant ore grade stockpiles at surface for reclamation. The current gold price provides significant enticement to process the stockpiles, but in the process we could achieve improved reclamation outcomes,” said Strelein.

Processing costs at Touquoy averaged C$12.10/t before closure, with recent contractor quotations for rehandle costs of C$6.05/t. Previous test runs on low-grade material delivered strong recoveries, the company reported.

St Barbara said it would prepare an amendment to its Industrial Approval with the support of the LIFT team, seeking authorisation to use the Touquoy pit for sub-aqueous tailings deposition – a practice it described as industry best practice. Subject to approvals, operations could restart within six to 12 months.

A restart would bring mining and employment back to rural Nova Scotia while providing near-term cash flow to support longer-term growth, the company noted. This includes the proposed 15-Mile processing hub, which is expected to produce about 100 000 oz/y of gold over 11 years once developed.