Mr. Chris Grove reports

COMMERCE RESOURCES CORP. ANNOUNCES FLOTATION PILOT PLANT AS PART OF THE CANMETMINING COLLABORATION ON THE ASHRAM RARE EARTH AND FLUORSPAR DEPOSIT

Commerce Resources Corp. has provided an update to its continuing collaboration with CanmetMining, focused on beneficiation testwork for the Ashram rare earth and fluorspar deposit. Following the successful bench-scale flotation test program (see news releases dated May 13 and Aug. 20, 2020) CanmetMining will carry out a pilot plant operation to scale up and evaluate the process it has developed.

Through test programs carried out in 2020 by CanmetMining, an alternative reagent scheme and flotation circuit were developed for the Ashram deposit. The work resulted in a marked improvement in flotation performance as demonstrated through a combination of distributed reagent additions, reagent synergism, and reverse conditioning in a very simple and basic flotation circuit. The performance included a considerable reduction in reagent consumption to one-half to one-quarter of the quantity (kilograms per tonne) of that utilized in prior testwork by other metallurgical labs. The results are significant as previous work has identified reagents as a key area of optimization in the Ashram deposit's flotation circuit, and where significant cost advantages may be found by screening the performance of each pertinent reagent with respect to their consumption and purchase cost.

The flowsheet developed by CanmetMining will be piloted at its facilities in Ottawa, Ont., using a recently constructed in-house pilot plant designed to process 16 kilograms to 20 kg of feed per hour. Approximately 1.5 tonnes of Ashram deposit bulk sample material were delivered to Corem, located in Quebec City, for crushing and grinding to the pilot plant feed's design criteria and will be delivered to CanmetMining shorty. The pilot plant operation is expected to commence toward the end of April, 2021, depending on potential COVID-19 impacts.

The financing for the testwork was provided by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) through CanmetMining's six-year rare earth element (REE) and chromite program (announced in April, 2015), focused on developing new extraction technologies, addressing Canadian environmental challenges, and improving the knowledge of Canadian deposits. The company's contribution to the collaboration was a supply of REE (rare earth element) mineralized material from the Ashram deposit, in which several tonnes remain readily available from a bulk sample completed in 2012.

The Ashram deposit outcrops at surface, allowing for a cost-effective collection of material for testwork. As such, the company is actively engaging with various research and academic institutions to support the advancement of the REE industry in Canada and in Quebec specifically.

National Instrument 43-101 disclosure

Darren L. Smith, MSc, PGeo, Dahrouge Geological Consulting Ltd., a permit holder with the Ordre des Geologues du Quebec and qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101, supervised the preparation of the technical information in this news release.

About Commerce Resources Corp.

Commerce Resources is a junior mineral resource company focused on the development of the Ashram rare earth and fluorspar deposit located in Quebec, Canada. The company is positioning to be one of the lowest-cost rare earth producers globally, with a specific focus on being a long-term supplier of mixed rare earth carbonate and/or NdPr (neodymium/praseodymium) oxide to the global market. The Ashram deposit is characterized by simple rare earth (monazite, bastnaesite and xenotime) and gangue (carbonates) mineralogy and a large-tonnage resource at favourable grade, and it has demonstrated the production of high-grade (greater than 45 per cent rare earth oxide) mineral concentrates at high recovery (greater than 70 per cent), in line with active global producers. In addition to being one of the largest rare earth deposits globally, Ashram is also one of the largest fluorspar deposits globally and has the potential to be a long-term supplier to the met-spar and acid-spar markets.

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