Mr. David Atkinson reports

EARTHWORKS OUTLINES INITIAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY FOR COPPER AND RARE EARTH PERMANENT MAGNET RECYCLING AND RECOVERY OPERATIONS

Earthworks Industries Inc. has outlined its initial development strategy following the company's acquisition of the critical minerals recycling and recovery system.

Earthworks has identified copper and rare earth permanent magnets as its initial priority recovery verticals and intends to advance development work associated with both material streams as the company works toward establishing its first critical minerals recycling and recovery operations.

The company intends to evaluate and advance the two recovery verticals in parallel, with the scale, configuration, sequencing and timing of individual deployments expected to be informed by factors including feedstock availability, metallurgical and technical validation, strategic partnerships, financing opportunities, permitting requirements, and market conditions.

The strategy reflects Earthworks' broader objective of developing a modular and scalable critical minerals recovery platform capable of recovering valuable materials already present above ground and returning those materials to productive use within Canadian, North American and allied supply chains.

Copper recovery

Copper has been identified as one of Earthworks' initial development priorities due to its fundamental importance across electrification, power generation and transmission, data infrastructure, transportation, construction and advanced manufacturing.

The company's initial copper strategy is expected to focus on the recovery of copper from end-of-life products, industrial materials and other suitable copper-bearing feedstock streams.

Earthworks intends to evaluate modular configurations at varying scales, allowing initial processing capacity to be matched to available feedstock and expanded progressively as supply relationships, operating performance and economics are established.

The company's underlying recovery platform identifies copper as a suitable anchor recovery vertical because of its established markets, broad availability across urban and industrial material streams and potential suitability for staged modular deployment.

Rare earth permanent magnet recovery

In parallel, Earthworks intends to advance the development of recycling and recovery capabilities targeting rare earth permanent magnets, including materials recovered from end-of-life products, industrial equipment and manufacturing streams.

Rare earth permanent magnets are important components in electric motors, renewable energy systems, advanced electronics, industrial equipment, and defence and aerospace applications.

The company believes the recovery of rare earth materials already circulating within Western economies represents an opportunity to complement primary mineral production while contributing to more diversified and resilient critical mineral supply chains.

Modular development and scalable deployment

Rather than committing at the outset to a single large-scale centralized facility, Earthworks intends to pursue a staged and modular development strategy.

The company is evaluating configurations ranging from pilot and demonstration-scale systems through small commercial and larger modular deployments. Under this approach, processing capacity can potentially be added progressively as feedstock availability, technical performance and commercial economics are validated.

The company's critical minerals recycling and recovery system is based on a broader modular architecture designed to support incremental expansion across multiple material streams without requiring the redesign of an entire facility as capacity increases.

This approach is intended to provide Earthworks with flexibility to allocate capital toward the recovery opportunities demonstrating the strongest combination of feedstock availability, economics, strategic value and partnership support.

David Atkinson, chief executive officer of Earthworks, commented: "Copper and rare earth permanent magnets represent two compelling starting points for Earthworks as we begin translating our broader critical minerals recovery strategy into operating infrastructure.

"Copper sits at the foundation of electrification, power infrastructure, data centres and the broader modernization of the Western economy, while rare earth permanent magnets are increasingly important to advanced manufacturing, transportation, energy and defence. In both cases, significant quantities of these materials already exist above ground in products and infrastructure reaching the end of their useful lives.

"Our strategy is to advance both opportunities while maintaining flexibility around scale and sequencing. Rather than building capacity and then searching for material to fill it, we intend to align deployment with feedstock, technical validation, strategic partnerships and available capital. We believe this disciplined, modular approach can allow Earthworks to build recovery capacity progressively while positioning the company to respond to areas of greatest commercial and strategic opportunity."

Building Western critical mineral supply chains

Earthworks' strategy is based on the premise that strengthening Western critical mineral supply does not depend exclusively on developing new primary mines.

Significant quantities of valuable metals have already been extracted and incorporated into electrical infrastructure, vehicles, motors, electronics, industrial equipment and other products. As these products reach the end of their useful lives, they represent a growing above-ground source of potentially recoverable materials.

Earthworks intends to develop the infrastructure, commercial relationships and recovery capabilities necessary to identify, aggregate and process selected material streams and return recovered critical minerals to productive use.

The company's broader recovery platform is designed to ultimately support additional critical and strategic material categories as technical capabilities and commercial opportunities develop.

Next steps

As part of the initial development program, Earthworks intends to advance activities including:

• Feedstock identification and sourcing;
• Feedstock characterization and metallurgical testing;
• Preliminary engineering and recovery circuit development;
• Evaluation of pilot and commercial-scale configurations;
• Strategic industry and technology partnerships;
• Potential offtake relationships;
• Government and non-dilutive funding initiatives;
• Evaluation of potential operating locations and deployment opportunities.

The company also intends to establish a dedicated critical minerals feedstock sourcing initiative designed to identify and develop relationships with organizations that generate, aggregate, dismantle, recycle or otherwise control suitable end-of-life and industrial material streams.

Additional information regarding this initiative is expected to be provided as the program advances.

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 U.S. 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.