A $4.0 million federal co-investment is accelerating a new approach to extracting critical minerals that conventional mining methods have long left untouched.
Somewhere beneath the Canadian Shield, billions of dollars' worth of copper, gold, and rare earth elements sit in formations too narrow, too steep, and too expensive to reach with any mining method that exists at commercial scale. That is the problem Novamera Inc. was founded to solve. The Ontario-based company has spent six years developing a Surgical Mining system that combines AI-driven orebody modelling, precision downhole sensing, and robotic extraction to target high-grade narrow veins directly from surface - no underground development, no blasting, up to 95 percent less waste than conventional methods. In March 2026, the federal government's DIGITAL innovation cluster committed $4.0 million in co-investment to advance the next phase of that technology, focused on copper and rare earth applications at a live Ontario site and the creation of a permitting pathway designed to unlock similar deposits across the province.
Canada sits atop enormous mineral wealth - but a significant portion of it has never been mined, and may never be, under conventional methods. Narrow, steeply dipping veins of copper, gold, and rare earth elements thread through the Canadian Shield at geometries that defy open-pit economics and overwhelm underground development timelines. Permitting alone for a traditional underground mine can take a decade. Capital requirements routinely exceed what junior mining companies can raise. The result is billions in stranded value sitting inert beneath Ontario, Newfoundland, and beyond.
This is the gap that Novamera Inc., an Ontario-based mining technology company founded in 2019, has spent six years building toward. Its patented Surgical Mining system integrates advanced downhole sensing, AI-driven orebody modelling, and precision robotic extraction into a process that works with conventional large-diameter drill rigs rather than against them. The system targets narrow veins directly from surface, extracts ore and lifts it via reverse circulation, and requires no blasting - generating up to 95% less waste and 44% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional methods. In March 2026, DIGITAL, Canada's federally backed Global Innovation Cluster for digital technologies, committed $4.0 million in co-investment to advance the technology's next phase: copper and rare earth element applications at a live Ontario site, and the creation of a first-of-its-kind permitting pathway designed to scale across the province.
Novamera's origin is a mining problem that seemed unsolvable. Dustin Angelo, now the company's co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, was President and CEO of Anaconda Mining, a junior gold producer operating a low-grade open-pit mine at Point Rousse, Newfoundland. Less than a kilometre from the pit sat a high-grade gold deposit called Romeo and Juliet - a steeply dipping, narrow-vein formation with grades estimated at five to ten times those of the open-pit operation. For nearly a decade, Angelo and his team explored every conventional extraction pathway. None were economically viable.
In 2017, Angelo and Allan Cramm, then Anaconda's general manager, began working with Dr. Steve Butt at Memorial University of Newfoundland's drilling technology laboratory. Cramm, watching drill holes curve naturally along the pit walls, began to ask whether conventional rotary drilling equipment could be adapted not just to sample narrow veins, but to mine them. The idea was to guide a large-diameter drill down the dip of a vein, steer it precisely through the mineralised zone, and bring ore to surface via airlift - leaving waste in place. In 2019, Angelo and Cramm presented an early version of the concept as finalists at Goldcorp's Disrupt Mining competition. The response changed their plans. Dozens of miners approached them describing identical problems at their own operations. By 2020, they had spun out the technology from Anaconda, raised CAD$2 million from Chrysalix Venture Capital, and incorporated Novamera as a standalone company.
The process unfolds in four integrated stages. First, Novamera deploys its proprietary downhole guidance tool - a sensor system configured to collect up to 4,900% more subsurface data than traditional delineation methods. Powered by borehole electromagnetic technology, the tool maps the precise three-dimensional geometry of the target vein, including its strike, dip, grade distribution, and the density contrast between mineralised rock and surrounding host material. This data feeds directly into Novamera's planning software, where machine learning and AI algorithms construct a digital-twin model of the orebody and calculate the optimal drilling trajectory for extraction.
Once the trajectory is confirmed, Novamera deploys its Extraction System: a Bottom Hole Assembly combining a positioning control system, a course correction device, and predictive steering technology that integrates onto conventional large-diameter drill rigs. The drill follows the modelled path through the ore zone, and mineralised cuttings are returned to surface via reverse circulation - a low-energy airlift method that bypasses primary crushing and substantially reduces the capital and operational footprint. What remains underground is primarily waste, not ore.
The environmental arithmetic is stark. Surgical Mining generates up to 95% less waste than underground or open-pit alternatives. GHG emissions fall by approximately 44%. Water discharge is reduced by 99%. Because the system requires no blasting, surface disturbance is minimal and community and regulatory friction is substantially lower than conventional development. The process is also faster: with no underground development required, the path from exploration to production can compress from years to months.
The March 2026 DIGITAL co-investment targets two concrete deliverables: technology advancement for copper and rare earth element applications, and the creation of a First-of-a-Kind permitting pathway in Ontario. The project is structured as a consortium - led by Novamera, with Northstar Gold Corp. (CSE: NSG) and Micon International Limited as partners - and backed by a total approved budget of approximately $11 million, of which DIGITAL contributes $4.0 million. DIGITAL's support is distributed across the three partners against eligible project expenditures, with Northstar expecting an initial reimbursement of approximately $300,000 by mid-April 2026.
The field site is Northstar's Cam Copper Project, located 18 kilometres southeast of Kirkland Lake, Ontario. Northstar's 2025 exploration target study placed the Cam Copper Zone 2 at between 75,000 and 140,000 tonnes grading between 9% and 18% copper - with a conceptual average grade of 12%. A 2023 drill campaign had returned a standout interval of 14.5% copper over 2.5 metres. Under the terms of a Turnkey Surgical Mining Services Agreement signed with Novamera in October 2025, Northstar intends to extract approximately 116,000 tonnes of high-grade copper from the near-surface Zone 2 horizon over 31 months using Novamera's precision system, generating direct-shipping copper mill feed. Small-scale production at Cam Copper is currently targeted for early 2027.
Micon International, an independent mining and geological consulting firm, is overseeing the NI 43-101 technical reporting requirements that will underpin the mine permitting application - a key component of the FOAK pathway. The permitting model being developed is explicitly designed as a scalable template: if successful, it creates a documented precedent for faster, lower-risk regulatory approvals for Surgical Mining deployments across Ontario.
The Ontario initiative comes directly off the back of Novamera's most significant technical milestone to date. In November 2025, the company achieved what it described as a world first: the commercial mining of a mineral deposit using the Surgical Mining system, at Great Atlantic Resources' Golden Promise deposit near Badger, Newfoundland. The extraction was witnessed by representatives from commercial partners IAMGold, Kuya Silver, and Bryah Resources - a signal of the breadth of interest the technology has attracted across commodity categories.
The Newfoundland deployment, supported by DIGITAL under a prior $3.5 million co-investment, had its own technical proving ground. At Great Atlantic's Jaclyn Main Zone, the team executed a full surgical mining cycle through three 100-metre drill holes, extracting up to 2,700 tonnes of ore. The program validated three-dimensional position control and real-time visualisation of the Course Correction Device - the steering component at the core of the Bottom Hole Assembly. "While early-stage field demonstrations are never perfectly linear, the project confirmed exactly what we set out to prove," said CEO Jim Hollis. "Surgical Mining can be effective in a real-world narrow-vein setting."
Sue Paish, CEO of DIGITAL, framed the rationale for continued investment in the context of Canada's broader strategic position. "Defence readiness and industrial competitiveness go hand in hand," she said. "By investing in Canadian companies such as Novamera, and accelerating the adoption of homegrown innovation, we will build more resilient supply chains, develop and retain intellectual property, and create high-quality jobs for Canadians." Hollis matched the strategic framing: "North America has no shortage of critical minerals - we have a shortage of ways to bring them into production quickly and responsibly."
The urgency behind Surgical Mining is not purely technological. Copper alone faces a projected global supply shortfall within the next decade, with electrification, defence modernisation, and digital infrastructure buildout all competing for the same constrained pipeline of new production. Rare earth elements face an even more acute supply concentration challenge, with refining capacity heavily consolidated outside North America. Estimates place the in-situ value of globally untapped narrow-vein deposits at approximately $6 trillion - resources that have historically been considered uneconomic not because they lack grade, but because no viable extraction method existed for their geometry.
The conventional alternative is bleak on timelines alone. A new underground mine in Canada typically requires 10 to 16 years from discovery to production, including permitting. A new open-pit operation is longer still. Surgical Mining, operating from surface with conventional equipment and a compressed permitting model, is designed to bring select deposits into production within a fraction of that window. The Cam Copper timeline - targeting initial production approximately two years after the consortium agreement - illustrates what that acceleration looks like in practice.
Novamera's commercial partner list has grown to include Hochschild Mining PLC, one of the world's largest silver and gold producers, which joined the company's Preferred Partner Program - a signal that the technology is attracting majors alongside junior operators. The Series A financing round Dustin Angelo referenced in November 2025 is intended to fund the scaling of the Surgical Mining platform and delivery of the first projects from Novamera's international pipeline.
What Novamera is attempting to build is not simply a better drill bit. It is a new operational model for a class of deposits tâĤ