Dr. Keith Barron reports

STRENGTHENING EUROPE'S SUPPLY CHAIN: AURANIA UPDATES ON BALANGERO NICKEL-COBALT PROJECT

Results have been delivered from 28 samples taken across Aurania Resources Ltd.'s Balangero Ni-Co project in northern Italy. The samples were assayed at Laboratoire GeoRessources -- Ecole Nationale Superieure de Geologie, Universite de Lorraine. The samples yielded between 1,560 and 2,015 parts per million nickel (average 1,763 ppm), 81.5 to 108 ppm cobalt, and 16.2 to 146 ppm copper. These new results are in line with the more than 200 historical samples taken from the site.

Aurania's president and chief executive officer, Dr. Keith Barron, commented: "There is a lot of historic data from Balangero, and this confirmed what was already suspected. In 1942, the Italian Government created SANI (Societa Anonima Nichelio Italiana) specifically to look for sources of nickel within Italy. At Balangero, the magnetic sand-sized fraction of the waste from asbestos beneficiation was actually recovered and used to make hardened steel for some months in 1943 for the war effort. This information has remained buried in the archive of the city of Turin. For a variety of reasons, nickel supply has once again become critically important in Europe, and we believe Balangero offers the most readily and easily accessible source of the metal today."

The Balangero mine (also called San Vittorio), 30 kilometres from the city of Turin in northern Italy, produced asbestos between 1918 and 1990, and was the largest open pit asbestos mine in Europe. During 1966, the waste from the mine was thoroughly investigated as a potential byproduct source of nickel and cobalt. Aurania staff became acquainted with the project while doing a literature search on their Northern Corsica Ni-Co project. The Balangero site, like Corsica, contains an abundance of the mineral awaruite, a rather rare nickel-iron natural alloy that does not contain sulphur, and can be used as a direct source of furnace feed for stainless steel production, or processed downstream for EV (electric vehicle) battery-grade nickel sulphate. As a potential source of "green" nickel, it certainly aligns with the stated goals of the European Union (EU) for the extraction and production of clean critical metals.

Several companies are looking at the small number of awaruite occurrences as potential sources of green nickel and cobalt. Among them are FPX Nickel Corp., with a market capitalization of circa $183-million, and First Atlantic Nickel Corp., with a market capitalization of $27-million. FPX's project is in Northern British Columbia, and First Atlantic, in central Newfoundland. Both are greenfields projects which will require the development of open pit mines. Both have limited site infrastructure, other than a few bush roads. Aurania's Balangero project is essentially identical in nickel grade to FPX and First Atlantic, but with the obvious difference in projects is that the potential resource at Balangero consists of dry-stacked tailings that have already been crushed to less than four centimetres. This material has already been extracted from the ground, negating any need for drilling, blasting, tunnelling and haulage from the subsurface. Moreover, there is existing electric power to the site, a railhead less than a kilometre away, a paved highway to the mine gate and an abundant source of skilled labour nearby.

A preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the Balangero project, in progress by SRK International Consultants, will provide an estimation of Aurania's proposed project capex (capital expenditure), but obviously there is no need for expensive installation of infrastructure, overburden stripping and mining of the rock, resulting in tremendous cost savings. The company is discussing whether to carry out a prefeasibility Study (PFS) before the end of 2026. Recently, a legal opinion determined that Aurania could perform sonic drill sampling and bulk sampling on the project under the existing permits of the company's MOU (memorandum of understanding) partner, RSA, rather than submitting lengthy environmental impact studies. This would substantially accelerate the project timetable. The company believes the project could be fast tracked under the European Union's Critical Raw Materials Act. Nickel, cobalt and copper are all considered strategic raw materials (SRM). The 17 SRM are a subset within the designated 34 critical raw materials and are mandated to be domestically sourced in the European Union.

Aurania has also had confirmation from Dr. Chiara Boschi at the Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources (IGG-CNR, Pisa, Italy) that a number of the 28 collected samples from across the Balangero project do not contain asbestos, but all contain awaruite. These samples which were asbestos-free were taken from old development rock piles. This suggests that the potential nickel resource at Balangero will ultimately consist of both crushed tailings and broken and excavated development rock at the surface. There is no historical measurement of the volume of these rock piles, though this will be assessed in future. The company expects inclusion of these development rock piles to be accretive to the project.

Comminution tests of the Balangero tailings are still in progress at STEVAL in Nancy, France. To date, the material appears amenable to easy extraction of the awaruite and magnetite, and there have been no red flags. A sonic drilling program to confirm the grades and thicknesses in the main tailings pile is being contemplated for April, 2026.

Qualified persons

The geological information contained in this news release has been verified and approved by Aurania's vice-president of exploration, Jean-Paul Pallier, MSc. Mr. Pallier is a designated EurGeol by the European Federation of Geologists and a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 -- Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects of the Canadian Securities Administrators.

About Aurania Resources Ltd.

Aurania is a mineral exploration company engaged in the identification, evaluation, acquisition and exploration of mineral property interests, with a focus on precious metals and critical energy in Europe and abroad.

We seek Safe Harbor.