FREDERICTON — The New Brunswick government has signed an exploration deal with a firm that plans to extract minerals from a long-closed mining site.
U.S.-based Regeneration Enterprises says it wants to pull metals from rock and chemical waste left at the Nigadoo mine site in northern New Brunswick.
The company says it will fund the environmental clean up of the mine using revenue generated from selling the metals.
Regeneration Enterprises managing director Michael McPhie says he is not asking for provincial funding during any phase of the project.
Instead, McPhie says the project will save taxpayer dollars as his company will take over the degrading site from the provincial government.
Provincial Natural Resources Minister John Herron says this is the type of investment New Brunswick is trying to attract as it works to revive its mining industry.
“This project will convert something that has been a liability for decades and turn it into new investment, good jobs and a cleaner site,” Herron said in a statement Monday.
Production at the mine, located near Bathurst, N.B., first started in 1956, according to a University of New Brunswick research paper. The mine was permanently shuttered in 1977 after repeated closures.
McPhie told reporters at a mining conference in Fredericton that zinc, lead, germanium, gallium, indium, silver and copper are among the minerals his company could pull from the abandoned mine.
He added a crew is headed to the site in the coming days to conduct tests that will determine if the project is feasible.
Those results are expected within one year and production could start within two to three years, he said.
Regeneration is a social enterprise company backed by Apple, Caterpillar and others with the goal of recovering metals from old mines and restoring the land.
A spokesperson said the New Brunswick government is expected to make another mining-related announcement at the conference on Tuesday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2026.
Eli Ridder, The Canadian Press
