Rome Resources

Expanding the Empire

Good Evening Team.

While we wait for the oh-so-obvious corporate news to land for the DRC assets, I want to take a brief moment of your time to consider Rome’s new Canadian assets.

A cynic might think these were acquired to pivot the company, in anticipation of the DRC assets being sold off for a whacking great premium - but no Sir, not me.

In March, Rome — which until now was known purely as a DRC tin and copper play — entered into an option agreement to acquire exploration licences across 109 km² of claims in the Canadian province of New Brunswick.

The target metals are tin, tungsten and indium.

I like these metals and have made clear why over several years. They, and the companies exploring and extracting them, have made me a lot of money.

The cost to get in the door: C$300,000, mostly in shares, spread over four years. This is basically nothing.

And the company had a field crew in the ground.

FWIW, this is early-stage exploration. There are no resources, no drilling results and no guarantees. But the geological setting is strong, the entry price is almost negligible relative to the company’s existing commitments, and the timing — against a backdrop of surging Western interest in critical mineral supply chains — is astute.

Where exactly is this, and why does it matter?

The claims sit in southwestern New Brunswick, close to the US border, around 40 km from the deepwater port of Saint John on the Bay of Fundy. I’ve learnt from a couple of bitter failures that proximity to infrastructure matters - if you ever find something, you need to be able to move it.

The geological anchor for the entire district is Mount Pleasant — described by Rome as the largest known source of tin in North America and home to the world’s largest indium resource base.

Mount Pleasant was actually mined for tungsten between 1983 and 1985 by a Billiton and Brunswick Tin Mines joint venture, before collapsing tungsten prices shut it down. It now sits mothballed, owned by the small Canadian junior Adex Mining (TSX-V: ADV), which carries a market cap of around C$95 million.

The rocks that host all of this mineralisation are Late Devonian granites — roughly 375 million years old — intruded into a volcanic caldera complex.

This is a classic tin granite system - highly evolved, late-stage intrusions rich in tin, tungsten, molybdenum and indium. The greisen alteration that accompanies these granites is exactly what you’d expect to see flanking a mineralised tin system.

Rome’s claims don’t cover Mount Pleasant itself. They cover the surrounding ground — and that’s the opportunity.

Yes, a nearology play.

Two claim areas

Rome’s option covers two distinct blocks of ground.

The first, originally called Three Lakes and now renamed Victoria Lake, covers 75.3 km² along the crestal greisenised part of the Mount Douglas Granite.

This is the younger, more evolved phase of the granite — the kind of material that concentrates tin and associated metals as the magma cools and differentiates.

Multiple mineral showings have been identified here, and surface sampling has already returned grades of up to 1.4% tin. Within this block sit the Spruce Lake tin-tungsten-indium and Smith Lake tin prospects, sitting on three terrane boundary crustal-scale faults that would have provided long-lived pathways for mineralising fluids.

A core zone of roughly 3.5 by 4.6 km has been identified within these claims, but the potential strike length of the feature runs to around 15 km.

The second area, Schoullar Mountain, covers 33.8 km² directly east of the Mount Pleasant mine, along the southern margin of the same granite-caldera complex.

This ground is described as largely underexplored despite lying directly along geological strike from a past-producing mine. It’s considered prospective not only for tin and tungsten but for indium — a rare and strategically important element used in transparent conductive coatings, semiconductor substrates, and specialist alloys.

A third area — Square Lake — sits on the eastern greisenised margin of the Mount Douglas granite and will also be sampled during the 2026 field season.

Deal structure

The option agreement gives Rome the right to earn 100% of the licences by paying a total of C$300,000 over four years following signing — C$250,000 of that in Rome shares, and only C$50,000 in cash.

Rome can exercise the option early if it chooses.

On completion, Rome would hold 100% legal and beneficial interest in the licences, retaining 97% of the net smelter return (the vendors keep a 3% royalty).

Rome also has a right of first refusal to buy back half of that vendor royalty for C$1.5 million in cash or shares.

This is textbook low-cost option structure - minimal upfront commitment, operator control from day one and the right to walk away if the geology doesn’t stack up.

On the other side, always keep a NSR. If you sell and your buyer hits the jackpot, it stops you from losing your sanity.

2026 field programme

The current field programme is focused on three priority areas: Schoullar Mountain, Square Lake and Victoria Lake. The programme involves over 500 surface and trench samples, targeting tin, tungsten and indium mineralisation.

At Schoullar Mountain, the work will focus on four historical induced polarisation (IP) geophysical profiles, with trenching planned in two areas where the subsurface chargeability anomalies are interpreted to be close to surface.

IP chargeability is a standard technique for detecting sulphide and metallic ore constituents — you basically need it to justify moving on to drilling.

At Square Lake and Victoria Lake, the programme combines surface sampling along greisen outcrops with targeted trenching in areas with known tin mineralisation. The aim throughout is to identify drill targets.

The total programme cost will come to a maximum of C$150,000. Rome has also been awarded an exploration grant from the Province of New Brunswick, which covers a portion of this expenditure — so we’re really not blowing the bank here.

Why indium deserves more attention

Tin and tungsten are reasonably well understood as critical minerals.

Indium less so, but it arguably deserves equal attention.

Indium is an extremely soft, silvery metal that occurs in trace quantities in zinc and tin ores. It’s one of the critical ingredients in indium tin oxide (ITO), the transparent conductive coating used in virtually every flat panel display, touchscreen, and solar panel on the planet.

There is no widely available substitute for ITO in these applications. Global supply is dominated by China, with secondary contributions from South Korea and Japan — almost none from North America.

Mount Pleasant’s status as the world’s largest known indium resource base is therefore geopolitically significant.

Yes, that means government grants if you find something.

The same caldera system that hosts that indium resource flanks Rome’s ground to the west.

Read more about the new oil fields here.

How this fits the broader Rome strategy

Rome’s primary asset remains Bisie North in the DRC — in particular, the Kalayi tin deposit, which is working towards an updated mineral resource estimate and, in my view, an asset sale or JV.

But the DRC is, shall we say, not the easiest jurisdiction to work with. Political risk, infrastructure constraints, healthcare problems and ESG considerations all feature.

While our assets are extremely high grade and our management team are one of very few capable of managing the the risk profile, this creates a ceiling on how certain investors will engage with the stock regardless of the underlying geology.

New Brunswick is the opposite: stable jurisdiction, existing infrastructure, supportive provincial government and proximity to the US market. The Critical Minerals Strategy announced by New Brunswick in March 2026 — with explicit commitments to get shovels in the ground and minerals to market — arrived almost at the same time as Rome’s option announcement.

CEO Paul Barrett has framed the Canadian move explicitly as complementary rather than competing with Bisie North, both in terms of commodity overlap (tin granites in both cases, with tungsten and indium as additional upside in Canada) and timing.

While the team awaits assay results from Bisie North to feed into the updated resource estimate, the Canadian field programme can proceed at minimal cost.

What to watch for next

The 500+ sample programme from the 2026 field season will be the first real test of the district’s prospectivity on Rome’s ground.

Assay results — expected to follow once the samples are processed — will tell us whether the surface showings occur often and widespread enough to justify drilling.

If the geochemistry holds up, expect the company to move towards an IP survey and maiden drill programme in 2027, at which point the Option would almost certainly be exercised.

Watch also for the Bisie North resource update, which remains the primary near-term catalyst for the stock.

I often think it’s good for any company to have a secondary asset in the background - if you only have one asset, there will be times of boredom (when you’re waiting for ALS to get in gear, are locked in a data room or just spending months on the early work).

It’s good to see Rome expand the Empire.