Fulcrum Metals
Corporate progress.
Good Morning Team.
Back in March I told retold the story of Fulcrum Metals — which sits on a century of Kirkland Lake tailings and holds exclusive rights to Extrakt’s cyanide-free TNS technology, which has Bechtel standing behind it.
I said 2026 was the year the story kicks into gear.
It’s kicking.
Since that piece, Fulcrum has confirmed the resource, brought in another director, landed the land, signed the pilot plant contract (not just the scoping study), picked up a fresh exploration target and — most importantly for a company at this stage — got two separate outside institutions to put real money behind the thesis.
The assays came back, and they held up
On 24 March, Fulcrum reported the full multi-element results from its 159-hole auger programme at Teck-Hughes: 0.63g/t gold, 0.70g/t silver, 12.86g/t tellurium and 17.12g/t gallium, weighted across the whole hole set.
That’s the diluted, full-property number — lower than some of the punchier early figures I flagged in March, but it’s now a complete, defensible dataset rather than a subset.
The more interesting addition was the bonus chemistry: rubidium averaging 106g/t, strontium at 842g/t and zirconium at 134g/t, none of which anyone had tested for at Teck-Hughes before.
None of these are recovery-tested yet — that work is still to come — but they add optionality to a deposit that was already carrying gold, silver, tellurium and gallium.
This data now feeds straight into the maiden 43-101 resource estimate.
That’s the next real re-rating catalyst, and it’s coming.
Board upgrade
On 22 April, Fulcrum appointed Natasha Dixon as a Non-Executive Director. She was part of the founding team at the Canadian Securities Exchange, chaired 5SD Capital through its acquisition by Pelangio, co-founded and still runs Mink Ventures, and sat on the board of Vanstar Mining through its C$45 million sale to IAMGOLD.
For a company that’s going to need repeated access to capital markets as it scales, that’s a useful hire/
Money in the door — twice
Better yet, FMET’s financing risk is falling, not rising.
On 5 May, Fulcrum signed a £6 million funding package with Yorkville (via YA II PN Ltd) — a mix of a £500,000 equity subscription at 8.75p, convertible loan notes structured in tranches (the first £1 million drawn immediately), a further equity subscription and a £2.5 million ATM facility.
The loans convert at premiums to market (11.375p on the first tranche, 130% of VWAP on the second), which means Yorkville only really wins if the share price goes up.
This fully funds the pilot plant build and testing programme — previously the single biggest funding overhang on the story.
Then, on 29 June, came a non-binding $20 million royalty term sheet with Chancery Royalty, alongside an immediate £200,000 equity subscription at 8.5p (with warrants at 11p).
The structure being discussed is a 5% NSR over Teck-Hughes gold production, with Fulcrum able to buy back 2% of it for $10 million post-production.
It’s non-binding and conditional on successful pilot-scale testing, so don’t bank the $20 million yet — but a royalty company doing due diligence and considering writing an equity cheque today is a solid external endorsement of the technical thesis.
Between Yorkville and Chancery, Fulcrum has now got two very different types of specialist capital provider putting money in ahead of pilot results.
That’s not nothing.
They own the ground now, too
On 20 May, Fulcrum secured five surface rights totalling 270 acres at Teck-Hughes for CAD$220,000 cash plus a 1.5% NSR (buyable down to 0.5% for a further CAD$1.25 million total).
Buried in the same agreement - a 1km area of interest around both Teck-Hughes and Sylvanite, with first right of refusal on anything else that comes up nearby for five years, at a fixed price of 2x acquisition cost.
That’s Fulcrum locking up the option value of the whole district, not just the two named projects.
The pilot plant is now contracted
This is arguably the most important update of the lot.
On 10 June, Fulcrum EnviroTech (the wholly owned subsidiary) signed a contract with TDI to deploy the pilot plant — moving on from the scoping study to execution.
TDI owns and operates the 2.4 tonne-per-day facility; Extrakt licenses the technology; Bechtel remains involved through its alliance with Extrakt.
Fulcrum’s job is essentially site provision and running the programme, which keeps the capital outlay light.
The plan is roughly 12 pilot batches over four weeks, using real Teck-Hughes material, generating the operational data that everything downstream — the PFS, the permitting, the eventual financing decision — depends on.
This is the de-risking step the market has been waiting for since the Phase 3 lab results in February.
Or in my case, longer.
Big Bear
On 2 June, Fulcrum put out results from Big Bear, a conventional hard-rock exploration project in Ontario that barely features in the core investment case.
Soil sampling across 639 samples returned peak values of 1.46g/t gold, defining a 2km x 2km stand-out target inside a 3km gold corridor that’s open in three directions. Rock samples along the same corridor have returned up to 139g/t gold historically.
There are 30 permitted drill pads already in place across three permit areas.
Management has been explicit that Big Bear isn’t core to the tailings-recovery thesis — the plan is to evaluate partnership opportunities, the same route taken with Tully.
So think of this as optionality sitting off to the side rather than a change of strategy. But it’s a free look at a discovery-stage target.
Tully pays off
And as if on cue, Loyalist Exploration has put out an updated NI 43-101 resource for the Tully Gold Project — approximately 265,000 ounces of gold, with figure coming from just 15% of the known Mafic Tuff host unit.
That number matters to Fulcrum specifically because of how the October 2025 sale to Loyalist was structured. Fulcrum didn’t take cash and walk away — it kept a 2% NSR, further milestone consideration tied to future project advancement, and a contractual trigger: if Tully’s resource was ever re-evaluated above 200,000 ounces, Fulcrum would receive an additional 15 million Loyalist shares (or cash in lieu).
265,000 ounces clears that bar comfortably. Subject to the technical report being filed, the milestone consideration is now due within 60 days.
At Loyalist’s current price of 3.5 cents, that’s north of CAD$500,000 of additional value, landing without Fulcrum spending another dollar of capital. It would also take Fulcrum’s stake in Loyalist from 78,972,740 shares to 93,972,740 shares, assuming settlement entirely in stock.
It’s a small number next to the scale of Teck-Hughes and Sylvanite, and management has been consistent that Tully isn’t core. But it’s a clean, live demonstration of the playbook - sell what isn’t core, retain royalties and milestones, let someone else spend the capital, and collect the upside anyway.
Worth remembering the next time Fulcrum does the same thing with Big Bear.
The bottom line
Nothing here changes the core argument from March - Fulcrum is not a conventional junior miner, it’s a licensed technology operator sitting on a huge, cheaply-acquired resource base with a credible industrial partner.
What’s changed is that the milestones are landing on schedule and the outside money is following them.
The sequence from here is unchanged in substance, just closer: pilot plant operating data, the maiden MRE, a Phase 4 PFS incorporating the higher recoveries and co-products, and a permitting pathway that’s already being walked with WSP Canada.
Add in a possible $20 million non-dilutive royalty and a Big Bear partnership as free options, and the risk/reward looks, if anything, better than it did in March — not because the thesis has changed, but because several things that were promises in March are contracts and cash in the bank by July.