Rhodium Assay Program Reported For River Valley

ROCKPORT - New Age Metals Inc. reported its Q4 2020 program for the River Valley Palladium Project near Sudbury, Ontario. The primary focus of the program is a Phase 1 of a multi-phase rhodium assay program designed to prove-up the world's most valuable metal as a payable component of River Valley. Chairman & CEO, Harry Barr, said, "We have seen the price of rhodium run from $6,050 an ounce to a high of $13,800 this year and the company plans to investigate the potential economic metal credit that rhodium offers at River Valley. We know the project contains rhodium as evidenced by its presence in our latest Mineral Resource Estimate. However, rhodium was not included as a payable metal in our 2019 Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA), due to insufficient number of assays and limited metallurgical recovery information. The Mineral Resource Estimation work completed to date shows over 25,000 ounces of rhodium in the Measured plus Indicated resource classification and an additional 20,000 ounces in the Inferred classification. The highest-grade rhodium assay is 0.873 g/t Rh for drill core from the Lismer North Ridge Zone. The first phase of the rhodium work will focus on the northern area of the Project, where initial production would potentially begin as determined in the 2019 PEA Study. This potential metal credit may be significant at current pricing and our objective is to complete sufficient re-assaying and metallurgy to prove that rhodium could provide up to 5% of the Project's payable metal package".

Rhodium (Rh) is present with palladium and platinum at the River Valley Deposit. However, the amount of existing Rh assays is relatively small and their spatial distribution limited, due to the high cost of assaying. The highest-grade rhodium assay is 0.873 g/t Rh for a core sample from the Lismer North Zone. Rhodium is included in the 2001, 2012, 2018 and 2019 Mineral Resource Estimates. Rhodium grades in the 2019 Mineral Resource Estimate (Table 1) are based on Rh assay data for 7,471 drill core samples and 2,641 channel samples, for a total of 10,112 assays. Of these, 8,268 core and channel sample Rh assays records are for the Dana North Zone, 1,338 core and channel sample Rh assay records for the Dana South Zone, and 506 core sample assays for the Lismer Zones: there are no Rh assays available in the database for the Pardo, Pine, Banshee, Lismer Ridge, Varley, Azen, and Razor zones. Clearly, the Rh assay data distribution is highly concentrated at Dana North. Furthermore, the rhodium mineral hollingworthite (Rh, Pt, Pd) AsS has been identified during mineralogical and metallurgical test-work studies of drill core from Dana North and Dana South. Although included in the 2019 Mineral Resource Estimate for the River Valley Palladium deposit, Rh was excluded in the 2019 Preliminary Economic Assessment as payable metal in the Net Smelter Return estimates.

In addition, a relatively small amount of additional Rh assay data (337 analyses) are available for core samples analyzed during an academic research project and for surface grab samples (158) assayed during exploration programs. The highest grades were 0.372 g/t Rh for the core and 0.309 g/t Rh for the surface grab samples. However, these data cannot be used directly for Mineral Resource Estimation purposes.

The Rhodium Assay Program for Q4 2020 is to be based on re-assaying available drill core samples for Rh. The drill holes to be sampled will be carefully selected from representative drill cross-sections of priority zones, primarily Pine Zone and possibly Dana South and Lismer North. Samples from mineralized core intervals above the lower cut-off grade and adjacent material are to be submitted to an appropriate laboratory for PGM assay with enhanced detection limits.

In addition to Rh (and palladium platinum and gold), the minor PGM ruthenium (Ru) and iridium (Ir) will also be assayed. The Q4 2020 work will be Phase 1 of a multi-phase program. Pending results and progress, the follow-up phases of work will include more sampling and assaying and mineralogical and metallurgical test-work, in order to ultimately prove-up rhodium as a payable metal for the River Valley Project.