Mr. David Atkinson reports

EARTHWORKS ENGAGED ABGI CANADA TO ADVANCE NON-DILUTIVE FUNDING STRATEGY FOR CRITICAL MINERALS RECYCLING AND RECOVERY SYSTEM

Earthworks Industries Inc. has engaged ABGi Canada, an innovation funding and advisory firm with more than 30 years of experience, to assist the company in identifying, evaluating and pursuing non-dilutive funding opportunities as Earthworks advances the commercialization and deployment of its critical minerals recycling and recovery system.

The engagement represents another step in Earthworks' strategy to establish the financial, technical and industry relationships required to advance the System from its current stage toward commercial deployment.

ABGi will work with Earthworks to identify and pursue applicable sources of non-dilutive capital, including government grants, subsidies, tax credits, and other innovation and project-funding programs potentially available to support the company's planned activities.

ABGi provides innovation funding and related advisory services to companies across Canada and internationally and maintains expertise across a range of industries relevant to Earthworks' activities, including mining, materials, manufacturing, engineering, energy and environmental technologies. Its Canadian practice advises companies on government grants, scientific research and experimental development (SR&ED) tax incentives, clean technology investment tax credits and broader innovation funding strategies.

Under its engagement with Earthworks, ABGi will assess the company's planned development and commercialization activities against applicable funding programs, assist in establishing a funding road map, prioritize opportunities based on their applicability and potential, and support the preparation and management of qualifying applications.

The company has been seeking an experienced partner capable of taking a leadership role within this area of its development strategy, allowing Earthworks and its technical and operating partners to remain focused on advancing the System, establishing feedstock and industry relationships, evaluating potential deployment locations and developing its broader commercial model.

Earthworks believes this work is particularly timely given the increasing strategic importance of critical minerals and the growing emphasis being placed by governments and industry on strengthening domestic and allied supply chains, increasing recycling and recovery capacity, and developing more resilient sources of strategically important materials.

The company intends to evaluate opportunities across multiple programs and levels of government as its activities advance and believes its relationship with ABGi may expand alongside the scope and scale of Earthworks' operations.

David Atkinson, chief executive officer of Earthworks, commented:

"Accessing the right non-dilutive programs can play an important role in advancing emerging technologies and infrastructure while preserving shareholder capital. We have been looking for an experienced group that can take the lead for Earthworks in this area, and we believe ABGi brings the combination of technical, financial and funding expertise required to help us navigate a broad and evolving landscape of opportunities.

"As we advance the critical minerals recycling and recovery system toward commercialization, our objective is to ensure that Earthworks is positioned in front of the appropriate programs, institutions and decision makers at the appropriate stages of development. We look forward to working closely with ABGi as we continue building out this platform."

The engagement is performance based, aligning ABGi's compensation with successful funding outcomes for the company.

Earthworks views non-dilutive capital as one component of a broader financing and commercialization strategy for the system. The company intends to pursue a combination of government programs, tax incentives, strategic partnerships, project-level financing and other capital sources appropriate to each stage of development.

As Earthworks' activities expand, the company anticipates that potential funding opportunities may extend across research and development, technology validation, equipment and infrastructure, clean technology, critical minerals processing and recovery, commercialization, work force development, and other qualifying initiatives.

The company believes establishing this capability early in its commercialization program can allow potential funding opportunities to be considered alongside project design and capital planning rather than pursued retrospectively.

Earthworks and ABGi intend to move expeditiously in reviewing the company's current and planned activities and identifying programs that may complement its development objectives.

Addressing the critical minerals supply gap

The race to build and power artificial intelligence infrastructure, electrify transportation, modernize defence systems, and expand advanced manufacturing has created an unprecedented and accelerating demand for critical minerals, including copper, rare-earth elements, lithium, cobalt, nickel, tungsten, titanium and many other materials that form the physical foundation of the 21st-century economy.

The problem is supply.

Refining and processing capacity for many of these materials is heavily concentrated in foreign jurisdictions, most significantly China, creating vulnerabilities in Western supply chains that are no longer theoretical, but active and urgent.

Both Canada and the United States have responded with major policy commitments, including Canada's critical minerals strategy and initiatives under the United States Defense Production Act and CHIPS and Science Act, directed at building domestic supply chain resilience.

Primary mining alone cannot close the supply gap quickly enough. New mine development frequently requires a decade or more to advance from discovery through permitting, financing, construction and production.

This is where recycling and secondary recovery become strategically essential.

Many of the materials required by Western economies already exist above ground in significant quantities within end-of-life electronics, industrial scrap, manufacturing byproducts, legacy mine waste, tailings, waste rock and other previously processed materials.

Urban recycling and secondary recovery can provide a faster, lower-impact and potentially more capital-efficient path to production than greenfield mine development. However, domestic recovery infrastructure across North America remains fragmented and undersupplied, creating a need for modular, deployable and digitally managed recovery capacity.

Through its acquisition of the critical minerals recovery system, Earthworks holds a full-stack platform developed to address that need, beginning with copper and intended to expand into battery metals, rare-earth elements, precious metals, and defence-related materials across Canada and the United States.

About Earthworks Industries Inc.

Earthworks Industries is a critical minerals recycling and recovery company advancing modular systems designed to recover strategic metals and strengthen Western critical mineral supply chains. The company is developing scalable recycling and recovery infrastructure to help address the growing need for domestic critical minerals production.

We seek Safe Harbor.