Vital Metals Limited provided a summary of the 2021 maiden mining campaign at its Nechalacho rare earths project in Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada. Local contract mining company Det'on Cho Nahanni Construction mined nearly 58,000 tonnes of ore from the North T pit at Nechalacho during a five-month mining campaign which aimed to demonstrate Nechalacho's viability as a rare earths project. Vital mined about two thirds (68%) of overall material planned to be mined during the campaign, with 408,000 tonnes of the planned 599,000 tonnes mined.

While mining volumes were lower than originally planned, Vital's ore sorter at Nechalacho exceeded expectations, enabling the Company to successfully sort lower-grade material previously below the resource cut-off not included in the mine plan. Vital also intersected a high-grade zone, the `dragon's tail', at North T during mining which has prompted the Company to review its mine plan. The redesign of the pit will be completed during the Northern summer with a follow up mining campaign to be completed during the 2023 or 2024 summer period.

Due to the unique nature of mineralisation at North T, where ore is red and waste is white, Vital classified ore and waste on sight, not assays or grade. Mining operations at Nechalacho ceased in October and equipment demobilised from site. Vital produced more than 1,000 bags of beneficiated product at site, each totaling approximately 1,000kg of material.

The first of these bags have arrived in Saskatoon to be processed at Vital's rare earths extraction plant, which is under construction. The transportation of this product has provided the first opportunity to test the logistics of transporting beneficiated product from site to the Saskatoon facility. In addition, it has stockpiled nearly 11,000m3 of material on site at Nechalacho, comprising high-grade (1,630m3) and low-grade (4,240m3) crushed material and fines (4,770m3), which it will process on site.