Fortune Minerals Retains P&E Mining Consultants Inc. to Prepare the New Reserve Estimates, Mine Plan & Production Schedule for the Updated NICO Project Feasibility Study

On October 28, 2025, Fortune Minerals announced it has retained P&E Mining Consultants Inc. to prepare new Mineral Reserve estimates, a mine plan, and a production schedule for its updated Feasibility Study (FS) on the NICO Cobalt-Gold-Bismuth-Copper Project. The company expects the updated study and project economics to benefit materially from currently higher gold and bismuth prices. The study will also incorporate recent process optimizations, including reverting to a 4,650 tonnes per day mill throughput and focusing on higher-grade underground ore in the early years of the mine plan.

This announcement is a routine and expected step in advancing the NICO project. Following a series of positive metallurgical and process optimization updates throughout 2025, commissioning key components of an updated Feasibility Study is the logical next move. The last FS dates back to 2014, making it completely obsolete in terms of costs and metal prices.

The impact is positive in that it demonstrates tangible progress towards delivering the key technical document required for project financing. However, it is not material. The market has been anticipating an updated FS, and this news simply confirms a consultant has been hired for a portion of the work. The material event will be the release of the study's results, which will outline the new capital expenditure (capex), operating expenditure (opex), and overall economic viability (NPV, IRR).

While the company highlights the potential benefits of higher gold and bismuth prices, this is forward-looking and speculative until quantified in the new FS. Critically, this operational progress does not address the company's precarious financial position. The June 30, 2025 financials revealed a shareholder deficiency of over $11.7 million and a significant working capital deficit. The company remains entirely dependent on dilutive financing, as evidenced by its repeated convertible debt deals with The Lind Partners, to fund these studies and its day-to-day operations.

Therefore, this news is a small, necessary step forward on the project development path, but it is overshadowed by extreme financial risk.

Fortune Minerals Limited is a Canadian development-stage mining company focused on advancing its 100%-owned NICO Project. The NICO project is a vertically integrated, polymetallic critical minerals project. It consists of a planned open pit and underground mine and concentrator in the Northwest Territories (NWT) and a related hydrometallurgical refinery in Alberta. The project aims to produce cobalt sulphate, gold doré, bismuth ingots, and copper cement, targeting the electric vehicle, energy storage, and technology sectors. The project is notable for its large bismuth reserve, representing 12% of the global total.