Blencowe Resources Plc announce it has signed a USD 5 million agreement with the DFC in order to provide substantial funding for the Orom Cross DFS programme, via a Technical Assistance Grant. The DFC is a proxy for the US Government which funds the organization and ultimately sets its vision, parameters and funding distribution. DFC Technical Assistance Grant (TAG): This is an innovative funding mechanism for the DFC to become involved at an early stage with key projects that they consider to be within their direct scope and strategy.

As Orom-Cross contains an estimated 2-3 billion tonnes of graphite and is one of the largest, high quality deposits worldwide it has considerable long term appeal to the DFC. Graphite remains high on the US Government critical metals and minerals list, hence this relationship with Blencowe opens a potential supply chain for high value end-product over a very long life of mine. DFC has been working closely with Blencowe through this TAG process and both the Company and the Orom-Cross project have been subjected to all necessary due diligence in order to progress DFC interest into this monetised initial funding solution.

Both parties see considerable long term value in their association with one another and Blencowe is confident this relationship will assist to provide a larger project funding solution ahead. One of the key terms within the TAG Agreement is for DFC to be mandated to provide financing for the full Orom-Cross project on commercial terms. Prospective new graphite producers need to think outside the box to find innovative funding solutions in order to deliver their projects and the DFC relationship provides this for Orom-Cross. Not only does the US$5 million grant cover a significant portion of the DFS costs, which materially reduces the dilutionary impact to Blencowe of funding the full DFS itself, but it also provides a highly motivated full mine implementation funding partner ahead.

Furthermore, the credibility associated with partnering one of the leading tier one financial institutions worldwide will open a variety of other relationships ahead as key players in the graphite market (including end user OEMs) can see a new high quality graphite project emerging that now has a more certain pathway to production. Blencowe will immediately request the upfront payment of the initial 20% of the TAG (US$1 million), which together with the Company's existing funds provides the means to continue DFS work underway and deliver the next as-agreed milestone payment with DFC. Once this next milestone is achieved further DFC funds are unlocked and so on, until the full grant is utilised and ultimately the DFS is completed.

One substantial advantage that now comes into play with the DFC relationship is that Blencowe is able to consider a larger-scale production strategy than it could do under the base-case scenario that the Company was considering whilst funding solo. The implications of this are enormous and the Company will provide a further update on this once the revised strategy is finalised. The expectation would be for a larger project from day one with a downstream processing facility built in-country to produce an uncoated battery-ready 99.95% SPG product.

These factors above will ultimately deliver a considerably higher Net Present Value than the USD 482 million NPV achieved within the 2022 Pre-Feasibility Study.