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

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[{"type":"text","content":"LONDON, Ontario / Dec 22, 2022 / Business Wire / Fortune Minerals Limited (TSX: FT) (OTCQB: FTMDF) (“Fortune” or the “Company”) (www.fortuneminerals.com) is pleased to announce that it has secured an additional extension to the option to purchase the JFSL Field Services ULC (“JFSL”) brownfield site in Lamont County, Alberta (see news releases, dated January 24, 2022, July 14, 2022, and October 3, 2022). Fortune plans to construct a hydrometallurgical refinery at this site for its vertically integrated NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper critical minerals project (“NICO Project”). The JFSL facility is a former steel fabrication plant located on 76.78 acres of lands in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland northeast of Edmonton and has 42,000 square feet of serviced shops and buildings adjacent to the Canadian National Railway. The JFSL site is also close to services, sources of reagents, and a commutable pool of engineers and skilled chemical plant workers to materially reduce capital and operating costs for the planned NICO Project development. Pursuant to the option agreement, Fortune can acquire the JFSL site and facilities for C$5.5 million. The term of the option can be extended for up to six months by Fortune paying JFSL C$15,000 per month. JFSL’s has the right to solicit competing offers for the facility, subject to Fortune’s right to complete its purchase on the agreed terms by the end of the month for any extension period and/or Fortune’s right of first refusal to match the competing offer. Like our news? Click-to-tweet. The NICO refinery would process metal concentrates from the planned NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper mine and concentrator in the Northwest Territories (“NWT”) enabling Fortune to become a vertically integrated producer of cobalt sulphate needed to make the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, portable electronics and stationary storage cells. The refinery would also produce bismuth ingots and oxide, an ‘Eco-metal’ used in the automotive and pharmaceutical industries and with growing demand as an environmentally safe and non-toxic replacement for lead in free-machining steels and aluminum, brasses and solders used in potable drinking water sources and electronics, ceramic glazes, radiation shielding, glass, ammunition, and fishing weights, and environmentally safe plugs to decommission oil an...

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