Nova Scotia green lights gold mine project for 2026 start up

The Nova Scotia government has approved a mine in Guysborough County.

Nova Scotia has approved a new gold mine in Guysborough County which can begin mining precious metals in 2026.

In a press release the provincial government says the goldmine will be owned and operated by NexGold Mining Corporation, where work is slated to start next year.

The province estimates it will lead to 735 jobs and boost Nova Scotia’s gross domestic product by $2.1 billion.

The industrial approval was issued Tuesday after seven years of consultations says the province.

The Goldboro Mine is expected to generate $1.1 billion in direct or indirect revenue over the next 15 years and around $528 million in tax revenues

NexGold is a Canadian company and has leased 779 hectares of Crown land for the project that has been awarded a 15-year timeline to complete its development, operations and remediation work.

The province says the mining industry supports more than 2,000 jobs that pay an average of $100,000 per year.

The province and NexGold had been in consultation for seven years before the industrial approval was granted Tuesday by the government, who had already signed off on the environmental assessment in 2022. NexGold is still waiting for federal approvals, which they believe will come in the next 90 days.

“When that’s all done then there’s windows of opportunity to build, but we don’t want to build during bird nesting season and things like that, so there’s times of the year for all that,” said Kevin Bullock, NexGold corporation president and CEO. “But our goals is to start building next year.”

The IA (industrial approval) process has been sped up after the province announced it was setting up a Large Industrial File Team (LIFT) within the Department of Natural Resources to speed up approval for critical mineral projects like this gold mine.

“Nothing was relaxed but it was sped up with more people involved,” said Bullock, referring to the LIFT support.

“There will be more jobs when we are building up than there are when we are in operation but both phases have substantial job creation,” said Bullock. “We hope to bring Nova Scotians home that are working away and we hope to bring Nova Scotians to an area where there’s not a lot going on.

“We think this is going to be a multi-decade mine.”

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