Fortune Minerals Extends Option to Acquire Alberta Refinery Site for the NICO Critical Minerals Project

Fortune Minerals Limited (TSX: FT) (OTCQB: FTMDF) (“Fortune” or the “Company”) (www.fortuneminerals.com) has secured an additional extension to the option to purchase the JFSL Field Services ULC (“JFSL”) brownfield industrial site in Lamont County, Alberta (see news release dated January 24, 2022). Fortune plans to construct a hydrometallurgical refinery at this site to process concentrates from the Company’s NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper critical minerals deposit and planned mine and concentrator in the Northwest Territories (“NWT”) (collectively, “the NICO Project”). The NICO Project would produce three metals identified on Canada’s Critical Minerals List needed in the energy transition and new technologies, being cobalt, bismuth and copper. In addition to the Critical Minerals, the Mineral Reserves for the NICO deposit also contains more than one million ounces of gold.

Fortune can maintain the refinery site option under the same terms and conditions that are currently in place (see news release dated July 27, 2023) and acquire the facilities for C$5.5 million before March 31, 2024. JFSL’s has the right to solicit competing offers for the facility during the option period, subject to Fortune’s right to complete its purchase at the end of each month of extension at the agreed purchase price and/or exercise its right of first refusal to match the competing offer.

Fortune closed a private placement of 22,000,000 units in late December 2023 to fund a metallurgical test work program to validate some process optimizations and provide additional information for detailed engineering. The units were issued at a price of C$0.04 per unit to raise gross proceeds of C$880,000 with each unit consisting of one common share issued on a flow-through basis and one half of a share purchase warrant exercisable at a price of C$0.07 per full warrant for a period of 24 months after closing. Fortune is waiting for the government ice road from Whati to Gameti to open, which would enable the Company to truck ore samples from its existing stockpiles at the NICO site to SGS Canada Inc. in Lakefield, Ontario for the planned test work program.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of any of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The securities will not be and have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or applicable exemption from the registration requirements.