Vital Metals Limited announced it has entered into a drilling contract, through its subsidiary Cheetah Resources Corp, with NorthTech Ltd, a Yellowknife based drilling company. The 1,800m drill program will be completed over the coming winter on the Company's Nechalacho Project in the North West Territories, Canada. Vital's drilling program will test three high-grade targets in the Tardiff deposit and evaluate potential expansion of the T Zone by targeting two additional zones, the South T and the S zones, which lie adjacent to the planned North T pit, where Vital plans to commence production later this year. Drilling aims to enable Vital to develop a mine plan for the Nechalacho Stage 2 mine development, as well as define additional resources in the vicinity of the current pit. Two Stage development program: Vital's strategy is to develop Nechalacho in two stages. Stage 1 of the operations focuses on developing the T Zone resource and Stage 2 will involve the development of the much larger Tardiff deposit. Stage 1: North T Deposit: Stage one will develop the previously drilled North T deposit located north of the main Tardiff Deposit. The North T contains a resource of 105,000 tonnes grading 8.9% TREO. 1 Key feature of the Stage 1 operations are as follows: ! Near-term/low capex operation to finalise customer acceptance and ramp-up to production. ! Ore Sorter has been purchased and will be mobilized to site in March 2021 for simple beneficiation of bastnaesite mineralization. Vital has signed a Definitive Offtake Agreement with REEtec for Stage 1 production with the supply of 1,000t REO (ex-Cerium)/yr for an initial five-year period. ! Vital will commence production of mixed rare earth carbonate in 2021. Stage 2: Tardiff Deposit Stage 2 envisages the development of several high-grade zones identified within the Tardiff (UpperZone) deposit. The Company previously announced this deposit's total resource of 95 million @ 1.46% total rare earth oxides (TREO) (1.3 million tonnes of contained TREO)2. The Tardiff deposits are envisaged as providing the resource for the long-term operation and expansion of the project. In addition to rare earths, this zone also contains zircon and niobium grades which are comparable with other polymetallic rare earth projects and were also the subject of feasibility test work previously undertaken at Nechalacho by Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. Key features of the proposed Stage 2 operations are as follows: ! Long-term/large-scale commercial operation providing long term security to the rare earth supply chain ! Fund expansion and the development of Tardiff deposit through the sale of mixed RE carbonate from North T! Vital's Definitive Offtake Agreement with REEtec provides the option for the supply of up to 5,000t REO (ex-Cerium)/yr for a period of more than 10 years. Should this option be exercised, this will be a cornerstone for Stage 2 operations at the Tardiff Zone. Proposed Drilling Program: Tardiff Zone: Vital has designed the planned drilling program to increase the confidence in near-surface, high-grade zones of light REO mineralisation previous indicated by Avalon with very wide spaced drilling and to collect samples to conduct metallurgical test-work using recently developed ore sorting technology. Avalon"s drilling target was the heavy REO Basal Zone, resulting in poor targeting of the light REO zones near the surface. To save on drill pads, Avalon drilled fans of holes from each drill site, resulting in very good coverage of Avalon's targeted Basal Zone but very poor coverage of the Upper Zone with clusters of very closely spaced holes and wide spacings between the clusters in the Upper Zone. Previous work on the Tardiff deposit has identified several high-grade targets which contained similar bastnaesite mineralization to the North T resource. This drilling program will test two of these targets plus a high-grade zone adjacent to the previous defined resource. The program aims to delineate further high-grade resources, within the existing global resource (1.3Mt contained TREO), to enable the definition of a mine plan which will provide sufficient feed for the targeted Stage 2 production, including options contemplated within the definitive Offtake Agreement signed with REEtec for up to 5,000t REO (ex-Cerium)/yr. It is noted that cerium typically accounts for approximately 50% of the total rare earth oxides contained within bastnaesite mineralisation. The drill program will comprise a minimum of 30 holes (1,800m) of HQ diamond drilling.