Western Metallica Resources Corp. reported the re-start of the Penedela Project drill program, following the announcement of the Vice President of Exploration appointment, which led to the reprioritization of drill targets and advanced program planning. The current phase of the 2,000-metre diamond drilling program, initially announced in May 2022, will focus on significantly stepping out along trend from previous targets with the aim of testing underexplored regions of the property.

This phase of the Company's drill program at Penedela intends to prove the property has the potential to host a million-ounce resource by prospectively confirming higher grades and wider intercepts, and to fill-in data intervals within the current structure. The primary objective of the Company's May-July 2022 drill program was to confirm the presence of mineralization, prove its extension along strike and potential beyond previous exploration programs. This phase had previously been paused to relog drill core produced from 2020 to 2022, also involving the consolidation of a new coding system with detailed descriptions of the infill and structures to reduce any risk of data loss throughout the logging process. The program planning involved detailed mapping, rock sampling and a total of 640 metres drilled at a total depth of 291 metres achieved, refer to initial results in press release dated August 8th, 2022.

The program successfully confirmed that the exploration potential remains open in both North and South directions and at depth, with an indicated opportunity to intercept projected breccia veins, and with five areas of specific interest moving forward. The diamond drill holes IB024, IB025 and IB026, although not indicators of high-grade results other than IB025 which intercepted a low-angle core axis pyrite-arsenopyrite vein with 0.5 metre at 17.4 g/t Au, combined with the reinterpretation of historical data, confirmed the below noted targets of significance. Indications of a gentle southern plunge of the fold axis confirmed from recent field observations infer the Cerro-East, Saddle Reef, N-S Fault and E-W Structure targets may continue on a southern trend.

The drill program is anticipated to continue into November and will involve a step-out aimed to evaluate previously identified but untested targets, with a strategy that involves priority drill holes designed to test these targets and secondary holes contingent to the geological evidence gathered from the prioritized target holes. Management continues to view Penedela as a project of exceptional importance, notably due to it being surrounded by significant Roman workings, in the robustly mineralised Navelgas Gold Belt, and structurally comparable to other prolific saddle reef and historical models. Gold occurrences in the Asturias region are indicated across three belts, the Navelgas, Oscos and Rio Narcea, and occurring in high-grade epithermal veins, skarns and as intrusive related gold deposits.

The Asturias region has been a significant producer of gold and hosts two of the largest currently known deposits in the Iberian Peninsula, Salave and El Valle-Boinas Carles, both of which are in close proximity to all three Western Metallica properties; Penedela, Valledor and Sierra Alta. Penedela remains a project of focus for the Company, being positioned in a prolific region formed by multiple gold mineralizing events, with historical production estimated in excess of 3 million ounces of gold. As part of the reprioritization of the Company, Sierra Alta has been defined as a secondary focus with preliminary mapping, drill scouting and targeting program planned in parallel to work conducted at Penedela.

The Company is fortunate to build off compelling historical work at the Sierra Alta Project, where limited exploration was conducted in the area by Rio Narcea Gold Mines Ltd. circa 1990s, during 2005-2006 and 2014-2015, where geological mapping identified numerous ancient Roman workings that align across a 10-kilometre NE-SW strike length and historical pits such as the Freita pit from which 29 million tonnes of material is estimated to have been mined. Rio Narcea Gold Mines Ltd. furthermore conducted soil sampling which identified a series of gold anomalies over an 8-kilometre strike length, the largest described as 3 kilometres long and 300 metres wide located to the North and a second region of gold anomalies to the South across an approximate 1.5 kilometres long and 200 metres wide area, as reported by Emerita Resources Corp. in 2016.

Subsequent rock sampling conducted by Emerita Resources Corp. in 2014 returned grades of up to 10.65 g/t Au, where decades prior, a 1 metre rock chip sample reported by Rio Narcea Gold Mines Ltd. returned a striking grade of 338 g/t Au and results of 48.96 g/t Au within an area of geochemical anomalies, proving that gold mineralization in the Sierra Alta system has the potential for very high grades. There remains an untested strike length of the Sierra Alta system which extends for more than 4 kilometres based on the distribution of historical workings and soil anomalies.

Readers are cautioned that the Rio Narcea Gold Mines Ltd. and Emerita Resources Corp. historical records have not been verified by a qualified person and should not be relied upon as current. Additional work is required for the historical work to be verified and incorporated into a current mineral resource estimate.

Sample preparation and analyses are conducted according to standard industry procedures. Drill core samples are crushed, split and pulverized prior to analysis of Gold by fire assay and Atomic Absorption and multi-elements by ICP-AES after four acid digestion. Analytical performance is monitored by means of certified reference materials (CRMs), coarse blanks, coarse and pulp duplicate samples.

Samples have been prepared in ALS Chemex preparation lab in Seville, Spain and analyses have been completed in ALS Rosia Montana, Alba, Romania (Fire Assays) and LAS Loughrea, Galway, Ireland (ICP).