Fortune Minerals Announces U.S. Government Funding to Accelerate the NICO Critical Minerals Project Development

Fortune Minerals Limited (TSX: FT) (OTCQB: FTMDF) (“Fortune” or the “Company”) (www.fortuneminerals.com) is pleased to announce that the United States Department of Defense (“DoD”) has awarded the Company a US$6,380,555 (~C$8.74 million) grant under the Defense Production Act (“DPA”) Title III program to expand the domestic capacity and production of cobalt for the battery and high strength alloy supply chains. This non-dilutive source of capital will allow Fortune to advance the vertically integrated NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper development asset in Canada (“NICO Project”) toward a project construction decision.

The NICO Project is an advanced development stage Critical Minerals asset comprised of a planned open pit and underground mine and concentrator in the Northwest Territories (“NWT”) and a related hydrometallurgical refinery in Alberta to process concentrates from the mine to value-added metals and chemicals. Once developed, the NICO Project would become a reliable North American supplier of cobalt sulphate for the rapidly expanding lithium-ion rechargeable battery industry, with gold, bismuth, and copper co-products.

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Fortune has been awarded DoD funding to complete work in four focus areas needed to advance the NICO Project to a project finance decision:

1. Metallurgical tests to optimize the Alberta Refinery site hydrometallurgical processes.
2. Secure the remaining authorizations and preparation of management plans for construction and operation of the NICO mine and concentrator in the NWT.
3. Secure the requisite permits to construct and operate the hydrometallurgical refinery at the planned brownfield site in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland.
4. Complete an updated Feasibility Study assessing NICO Project economics with the new refinery site, recently completed Tlicho all-season road, the new mine plan and production schedule and other recent optimizations.

The Company’s goal is to deliver vertically integrated North American production facilities to become a reliable domestic producer of cobalt, bismuth, and copper Critical Minerals with more than one million ounces of gold as a liquid and countercyclical co-product. The cobalt sulphate production from the NICO Project would provide a source of battery materials that is compliant with the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) and help qualify U.S. customers of North American built electric vehicles for tax credits supporting the transition to e-mobility.