Critical Elements Lithium Provides a Corporate Update

HIGHLIGHTS

• Critical Elements confirms ongoing interest and progress in the Rose Project financing negotiations with potential strategic partners.
• Critical Elements continues to work towards a Rose Project timeline that targets commencement of production of high quality spodumene concentrate in 2026.
• Management continues its procurement program to purchase long lead time items to protect the Rose Project timeline.
• Detailed engineering continues to advance with a high degree of confidence consistent with the Rose Project timeline.
• Programs to meet extensive pre-construction requirements under governmental authorizations and the 2019 Pihkuutaau Agreement are on-target.
• An initial drill program to test the new Rose West discovery and other targets is expected to commence in early 2024.
• While the market for lithium and lithium equities has corrected over the past year, management views the future positively.

MONTRÉAL, QC / ACCESSWIRE / December 20, 2023 / Critical Elements Lithium Corporation (TSX-V:CRE)(OTCQX:CRECF)(FSE:F12) ("Critical Elements" or the "Corporation") is pleased with the progress being made to advance the unique Rose Lithium-Tantalum Project ("Rose Project") in Eeyou Istchee, Québec and, ultimately, achieve its vision to become a large-scale, sustainable, and reliable vertically integrated supplier of lithium for the emerging electric vehicle and energy storage industries.

The Rose Lithium-Tantalum project ("Rose or the "Project") is situated within the Rose and Rose South property blocks (Figure 1), which constitute 395 km², or only 38% of the Corporation's highly prospective 1,050 km² exploration portfolio in Québec.

Summer 2023 Prospecting Results

During the summer of 2023, Critical Elements conducted a prospecting program over several areas, including the Rose, Rose South, Rose North and Nemaska belt properties. The objective of the field program was to identify new pegmatite bodies using systematic rock geochemical sampling of all pegmatite bodies in order to refine the geological interpretation of the properties and prioritize further exploration work including drilling. A total of 774 rock samples were collected (866 samples including QA/QC) during the exploration campaign with 95 samples reporting values over 100 ppm Ta₂O₅ and/or values over 0.10% Li₂O.

As reported on September 12^th, 2023 and in October 17th, 2023, the press releases state several new outcrop discoveries have been identified in the Rose pegmatite swarm. To date, 4 spodumene-bearing pegmatite outcrops have been identified in this New Discovery Area. At this early stage, the exact strike length, width and orientations of these dykes is unknown, but the apparent strike length along the outcrops exceeds 400m. All results from the summer program have now been received with selected results over 3% Li₂O including 3.18% Li₂O, 3.00% Li₂O, 3.98% Li₂O, 3.91% Li₂O, and 5.10% Li₂O. Full table of best results is shown in Table 1. The reader is cautioned that grab samples are selective by nature and may not represent average grades of the mineralization in the pegmatites. Table 1 provides all sample results with values over 100 ppm Ta₂O₅ and/or values over 0.10% Li₂O. Remaining samples did not return significant values.

Table 1: Best new results from summer program 2023