A COUTTS COMMENTS ON TIMETABLE 2021-01-20

A. Coutts, Noront We’ve recently announced a new deal in the marketplace, Noront now has new major shareholder which is an Australian company called Wyloo Metals. They’re one of the biggest investment funds in Australia and they’ve taken a cornerstone position in Noront with this long-term view of developing the Ni deposits and subsequently the other deposits in the Ring of Fire. Our timelines depend upon the road permitting, and I’ll go into a little bit of detail about that. Traditionally the mining company is asked to be the proponent or the champion of the environmental assessments of not only the mines but also the access infrastructure (the roads). That was the way our permitting started, the government asked us to do the environmental assessment on that 300 km road. Upon further discussions with the province of Ontario we said: “if you, as a province, are going to bankroll the construction of the road into the region because you want all these mines developed and the economic uplift, does that make sense for us to be the proponents of the environmental assessment?” and then jointly we discussed the fact that maybe a better outcome would be if the First Nations themselves did the environmental assessment. It’s their traditional lands, we want to make sure they’re on board and supportive, we want to make sure it’s done to their satisfaction. What happened is, along with the government, Noront pulled back out of that process, the government funded the First Nations, to the tune of CAN$60 million, and they are doing the environmental assessments on the roadway. This has been going on for about a year and half now, it will probably take another two years to complete and have all the environmental permits in place, and then at that point in time the construction of the road can start. The construction itself will probably take two to two and a half years depending on how it gets started. Long story short, there will be a road into the Ring of Fire that can haul the industrial ores to the railhead within a timeframe of five years. After the next two years, Noront is really going to be starting to think about how to raise this project financing, to complete feasibility studies and environmental assessments and be ready to go when that road arrives. Our plans are to build first the Ni deposit and very soon afterwards to build that first Cr deposit because, as I mentioned, it’s within 500 m and can share the infrastructure. When we look at our timeline, we’re thinking production of Cr ores within seven years from now, so 2027 and that would give us time to permit and build that FeCr facility in Sault-Ste Marie, which is the town on Great Lakes water which we’ve chosen to be the site of our FeCr plant