Novamera has closed its C$5 million ($4 million) Series A financing round, providing the necessary funds to carry out the first full field trial of its Sustainable Mining by Drilling (SMD) solution for narrow-vein mining.

BDC Capital’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund was the lead investor and Chrysalix Venture Capital also participated with a follow-on investment through the Chrysalix RoboValley Fund.

The field trial, which is taking place at Anaconda Mining’s project site in Newfoundland, Canada, has commenced and will be ongoing until the end of November. The company says it is carrying out a proof of concept, testing the entire SMD system and process.

Dustin Angelo, President and CEO of Novamera, said: “The financing, along with the non-repayable funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada, will help us develop the first generation SMD system and position the company to be the global leader in precision mining. The mining industry faces many challenges that require more sustainable and environmentally-friendly solutions and SMD will be an economically viable option to extract narrow vein deposits with minimal waste and disturbance.”

Novamera says it is developing “keyhole surgery” for mining, an innovative clean technology and process that will be able to mine the numerous small-scale narrow vein mineral deposits found worldwide more safely, economically and sustainably using pilot hole diamond drilling and downhole directional sensors with machine-learning algorithms to to identify vein/host rock interfaces. Then it will use industry proven drilling technology – a variant of conventional Pile Top RCD drills used successfully by the construction industry followed by a form of reverse circulation drilling – to extract the ore.