Fortune Minerals Secures Option to Purchase Brownfield Site in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland for NICO Refinery

Fortune Minerals Limited (TSX: FT) (OTCQB: FTMDF) (“Fortune” or the “Company”) (www.fortuneminerals.com) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an option agreement with JFSL Field Services ULC (“JFSL”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of a large international engineering company, to purchase its former steel fabrication plant, located in Lamont County within Alberta’s Industrial Heartland northeast of Edmonton. Pursuant to the agreement, Fortune will have six months to carry out additional due-diligence and complete the purchase of the JFSL facility for C$5.5 million. Fortune intends to acquire this brownfield site in order to construct the hydrometallurgical refinery for the planned NICO Cobalt-Gold-Bismuth-Copper mine in the Northwest Territories (“NWT”). The proposed refinery would process concentrates from the mine and produce cobalt sulphate for the rapidly expanding lithium-ion rechargeable battery industry and their use in electric vehicles (“EV’s”), portable electronic devices, and stationary storage cells to make electricity use more efficient. In addition to cobalt, the unique mineral assemblage of the NICO deposit includes a highly liquid 1.1 million ounce in-situ gold co-product, 12% of global bismuth reserves, and copper. The vertically integrated NICO development (“NICO Project”) would provide a reliable North American source of three Critical Minerals produced responsibly with Canadian environmental-social governance (“ESG”) values that are essential to support the transformation to new technologies and the growing green economy.

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"Cobalt, lithium and nickel are all minerals with huge demand in the modern world. Fortune’s new refinery is exactly the type of job creating, diversifying investment we envisioned with our mineral strategy and action plan.”
Jason Kenney, Premier of Alberta

“Fortune Minerals’ new facility will add to Alberta’s mineral refining capacity and will bring exciting economic opportunities to the province. Alberta’s mineral strategy and action plan capitalizes on our untapped potential and helps meet demand for the critical and rare earth minerals which are essential to supporting a low-carbon economy. Fortune Minerals’ investment announcement demonstrates that our strategy is working. Our province has the experienced workforce, and the necessary infrastructure to support continued growth in the minerals sector, and there is no better place for a new Critical Minerals refinery than Alberta’s Industrial Heartland.”