Guardian Metal Resources (LSE: GMET; NYSE-A: GMTL) started trading on NYSE American on Friday, using a U.S. listing to widen its investor base and push two Nevada tungsten projects toward development.
The company, already listed in London, had launched a U.S. initial public offering of about $50 million (C$68.6 million) in American depositary shares (ADS), before underwriting discounts and commissions. Each ADS represents five ordinary shares. Guardian said it would use the proceeds mainly to advance Pilot Mountain, while also funding exploration and early-stage engineering at Tempiute.
“The money gets us to a final investment decision at both projects,” CEO Oliver Friesen told The Northern Miner. “If we do our job correctly, the next time that we’re looking to raise money, it would be to actually build these mines.”
The New York listing lands as Washington increasingly looks for domestic sources of tungsten, a metal used in munitions, industrial tooling and other high-performance applications. European APT prices hit about $2,250 per tonne in mid-March, up about 557% from roughly $340 in early February last year, according to market pricing cited by Bloomberg and Fastmarkets. Guardian is working to position its Nevada assets as part of a U.S. supply chain revival that could mine, process and consume tungsten at home rather than rely on imports from a market long dominated by China.
Better access
The U.S. listing puts the company in front of a broader pool of American institutional and retail investors as the company seeks to move from exploration into development. U.S. investors have shown a stronger appetite for U.S.-based assets listed on a major domestic exchange, Friesen said, especially in a sector tied to critical minerals and defence supply chains.
Pilot Mountain remains the lead project. The asset, about 270 km southeast of Carson City, hosts a historical 2018 measured and indicated resource of 12.53 million tonnes grading 0.27% tungsten trioxide, with copper, silver and zinc credits, for about 34,290 tonnes of contained tungsten. Guardian is completing a pre-feasibility study there with support from a $6.2 million U.S. Department of Defense award under the Defense Production Act Title III program.
That study is due by the end of the second quarter, Friesen said. Guardian then plans to move into a definitive feasibility study and target a final investment decision at Pilot Mountain in the second quarter of 2027.
Drilling in 2024 and 2025 targeted both resource growth and higher grades within the skarn system. Highlight hole PM24-012 cut 39.3 metres grading 0.735% tungsten, 0.44% copper, 0.3% zinc and 39.7 grams silver per tonne from 66 metres downhole. While hole PM24-001 returned three mineralized intervals totalling 38.7 metres, including 27.9 metres grading 0.42% tungsten, 1.30% zinc, 0.12% copper and 23.1 grams silver per tonne.
Pilot Mountain tungsten project in Nevada. Image from Guardian Metal Resources
Faster to market
Tempiute gives Guardian a second path and possibly a faster one. The past-producing Emerson mine, about 240 km north of Las Vegas, comes with legacy infrastructure that includes a standing mill building, a 3,000-kilowatt substation, maintained access and historical mine workings. Guardian is working toward an updated resource there, but Friesen said the near-term opportunity may lie above ground.
“There’s some opportunities to potentially actually leapfrog Pilot Mountain in terms of bringing product to market,” he said. “We can actually move forward quite quickly with the ore stockpiling opportunity or potentially the tailings as well.”
Guardian is assessing ore stockpiles mined in the 1980s that never went through the plant, along with historical tailings that still contain residual tungsten. Most of the project also sits on patented mining claims, a factor that could shorten the permitting path and help the company move more quickly than a greenfield build would allow.
Construction decisions
Friesen said the aim is to bring both assets to commercial production within the current U.S. administration.
The company’s pitch also rests on tungsten’s downstream advantage. Unlike many critical minerals mined in the U.S. but processed overseas, tungsten already has domestic treatment capacity, Friesen said. He pointed to facilities in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Alabama and upstate New York that can take concentrate and convert it into intermediate and downstream products for U.S. industry and defence.
Guardian has already signed a non-binding letter of intent with Global Tungsten & Powders, which operates a plant in Towanda, Pa. That agreement outlines potential offtake from Guardian’s Nevada projects, but the company says it wants to keep its options open as the assets advance. Friesen said that could include future sales into U.S. government stockpiles or directly to defence contractors, with binding agreements possible later this year.
“As long as that primary tungsten mining imbalance persists, then we should continue to see a really strong pricing environment,” Friesen said.
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