Critical One hits visible antimony at Howells Lake in Ontario as defence metal gains momentum

Critical One Energy’s (CSE: CRTL; US-OTC: MMTLF) first modern drill hole at the Howells Lake project in northwestern Ontario cut visible stibnite from near surface across about 100 metres of core, reviving an antimony prospect idle for about four decades.

Hole HWL-2026-001 reached 201 metres and showed many stibnite-bearing zones within the first 100 metres, starting at 24 metres downhole, the company announced Wednesday. It flagged intervals from 24 to 26.5 metres, 35 to 37 metres and 75 to 78 metres at the East zone of the Howells Lake antimony-gold project, about 120 km west of the Ring of Fire access corridor. Assays are pending from AGAT Laboratories in Thunder Bay.

“No one’s really looked seriously at antimony as a product on its own,” founder, chairman and CEO Duane Parnham told The Northern Miner on Wednesday. “Antimony has always been kind of a by-product of some of these other gold camps.”

Critical One has budgeted $9 million (US$6.5 million) for Howells Lake this year, Parnham said, and expects drilling to continue through the summer as it moves from the East zone to the West zone and then to a western anomaly. The company wants modern technical data first and a current technical report by year-end, before it rushes into a resource estimate.

“That is the right order. The story is stronger now than it was a week ago,” Parnham said. “The proof still sits in the assay lab.”

War metal

New discoveries of antimony matter today given that China tightened export controls in 2024 and then banned metal exports to the United States, helping drive prices sharply higher and exposing North America’s weak supply chain. New Brunswick last month launched a competitive process for the old Lake George antimony mine, another sign governments want fresh domestic supply.

Antimony has several key industrial uses, among which are defence applications such as flame-retardant fabrics, communication equipment, night vision goggles, ammunition hardening and laser sighting.

A location map of the Howells Lake project in northwestern Ontario. Credit: Critical One Energy

The U.S. has no mined production of antimony and therefore relies on foreign suppliers such as China for the critical mineral that its military uses.

Howells Lake sat in private hands for decades after New Jersey Zinc Exploration Company of Canada drilled the discovery in the late 1970s and then left the project dormant.

Headstart

The Critical One team had more to work with than a typical early-stage play, Chief Geological Officer Matthew Trenkler told The Miner. Historical drilling at the discovery area totalled about 37 holes over 2,000 metres, he said, giving the company enough data to test the old model with modern methods.

“We’re not going in blind to this project,” he said.

The first round totals about 3,000 metres with one drill rig. Trenkler said the program is almost twinning older holes to replicate the historical mineralization, while stepping back to test lower levels and look for extensions. Historical work traced mineralization to about 200 metres below surface, he said, and the company plans to push beyond that.

Yet the first hole answered only the first question. Visible stibnite confirms the system, not the grade, and Critical One’s cited historical estimate of 1.7 million tonnes grading 1.4% antimony with associated gold is non-compliant. The true widths are still unknown and only assays can show whether the first hole carries the sort of grades the old files suggest.

Critical One last August expanded the land package by 67% to about 250 sq. km but the site still faces the old northern challenge of distance. Parnham said any future operation would likely need on-site pre-concentration and trucking to Pickle Lake or a port, a route he called manageable but costlier than a project with ready infrastructure.

Plus gold

Howells Lake is bigger than the small historical footprint now being drilled.

The property runs for about 30 km along strike, Parnham said, and recent Versatile Time-Domain Electromagnetic work, tied to recovered historical data, points to a deeper conductor below the old discovery. It also identified a gap between the East and West zones and another target about 5 km west of the West zone.

While the East zone hosts mainly antimony, the West zone appears to bring more gold into the system, Parnham explained.

“Howells Lake may prove stronger as a gold-antimony deposit than as a pure antimony mine,” he argued, “which could help economics in a market where many juniors are chasing narrow antimony veins.”