Giyani Progresses to Production Ramp-Up at the Demonstration Plant

Giyani Metals Corp. (TSXV:EMM, GR:A2DUU8) ("Giyani" or the "Company"), developer of the K.Hill Battery-Grade Manganese Project in Botswana ("K.Hill" or “the Project”), is pleased to provide an update on the start of production at the Demonstration Plant (“Demo Plant”) in Johannesburg.

Highlights:

• The Production ramp-up (C5 Commissioning) phase has commenced, and the team continues to work determinedly towards first production of battery-grade manganese (HPMSM). The Demo Plant materially advanced Hot Commissioning (C4 Commissioning) during January 2025. C4 and C5 commissioning naturally progress in parallel in the final stages of commissioning.

• Demo Plant product samples are on track to be produced in Q1 2025 and then provided to potential off-takers to begin qualification trials as part of the offtake process, which will form an integral component of Project Financing.

• The Demo Plant is designed to identify opportunities, improve the design, and significantly derisk the project as Giyani will better understand how the Commercial Plant (to be built in Botswana) will respond in advance of construction, commissioning, and ramp-up.

• The Demo Plant also enables final optimisation of the engineering design and flowsheet in order to reduce operating costs and carbon profiles, in parallel with the Definitive Feasibility Study (“DFS”) which is underway and expected to be completed in 2025.

• In addition to targeted operating cost reductions, Giyani announced last week the receipt of its Special Economic Zone (“SEZ”) licence for its Commercial Plant which is planned for construction adjacent to Giyani’s extensive, 100% owned manganese ore sources in Botswana.

• The SEZ licence will directly positively impact the Company, as the SEZ Licence brings with it fiscal and non-fiscal benefits. Important to note is that the Company will benefit from 5% corporate tax rate for the first 10 years of production from its Commercial Plant, increasing to 10% thereafter, a considerable benefit which was not included in the 2023 PEA.

• CEO Charles FitzRoy has also been in Johannesburg this week, seeing the Demo Plant progress ahead of our pre-Indaba investor site visit to the Demo Plant on February 1, 2025. The Giyani team are also attending the 121 conference and the Indaba conference in Cape Town next week, with a full schedule of off-taker, investor, and strategic meetings.

Charles FitzRoy, President and CEO of the Company, commented:

“Giyani’s Demo Plant is progressing to the production ramp-up commissioning phase , and the team continues to work determinedly towards first production of battery-grade manganese. We are targeting first production of HPMSM in Q1 2025. Our technical and operational teams are demonstrating excellent skill and resilience in navigating the usual late-stage commissioning challenges that occur when plants ramp-up toward production.

All the learnings and identified adjustments we are making from the process underway further endorse the strategic decision to construct a Demo Plant at a 1:10 scale to the planned Commercial Facility. This significantly de-risks the final Project and provides Giyani with a unique platform to understand how its planned Commercial Facility will behave. The Demo Plant also provides Giyani the ability to conduct R&D on its process and ensure it maintains its early mover advantage.

The Demo Plant is an essential component in Giyani’s long-term strategy to deliver high-purity batterygrade manganese to the EV market. This production capacity establishes a strong foundation for Giyani to engage with potential offtake partners, as the continuous process flow of the Demo Plant will allow the team to target steady-state operations over extended periods, consequently proving Giyani’s ability to produce consistent battery-grade manganese and satisfy offtake requirements. This continuous operation at pre-commercial scale also provides critical information for understanding how the Commercial Plant will respond, further de-risking the Project.”

Demo Plant Commissioning and Production Update

The construction of the Demo Plant, which consists of nine Process Modules (each a self-contained process system within a fixed frame), is largely complete.

Since the news release (“NR”) dated December 20, 2024, commissioning continued to advance the C4 commissioning phase in January (Hot Commissioning with reagents and steam).

Commissioning challenges have included power outages, water supply disruptions, technical challenges with the commissioning of the control system and the holiday break which disrupted reagent and final equipment supply.

C5 Production Ramp up commenced in January and is the final phase in the commissioning process and involves running K.Hill ore through the complete process on a continuous basis.

The Demo Plant laboratory, independently installed and operated by Quality Lab Services (QLS, a Minopex company), is at operational capacity. The key instrumentation of ICP-OES and XRF are both fully operational and the first sets of full analytical assays have been completed.

Stages of commissioning:

• C1 – Full mechanical completion (individual Process Modules)

• C2 – Dry testing, direction testing, loop testing (individual Process Modules)

• C3 – Cold/Water Commissioning, software testing (individual Process Modules)

• C4 – Hot Commissioning with reagents and steam (typically full Process)

• C5 – Production Ramp-up (full Process)

In addition to progress at the Demo Plant, concurrent metallurgical test-work is underway to further optimize the flowsheet. Giyani is focused on further reducing reagent use and improving both the operating cost and carbon profiles for the Commercial Plant, planned for construction adjacent to Giyani’s extensive 100% owned manganese oxide ore sources in Southern Botswana.

The Demo Plant is designed at a scale factor of approximately 1:10 to the planned Commercial Plant. This provides robust and reliable scale-up from the Demo Plant data when the Commercial Plant is implemented. To illustrate, the leach tanks have a 60cm diameter in the Demo Plant and this is expected to be 8-10x larger at approximately 5m in the Commercial Plant.

Demo Plant Operational Overview

As the Demo Plant is a planned copy of the anticipated Commercial Plant, at a 1:10 scale, the overall operating requirements and system requirements are very similar. Alongside the engineering, commercial and research benefits of the Demo Plant, the availability of mature SOPs will facilitate a smooth transition to full-scale commercial production.

The independent, fully ISO-certified laboratory will allow commercial-level metal accounting and provide rapid assay turnaround times to enable effective operation of the Demo Plant. The laboratory is operational with key equipment such as the ICP-OES and XRF already in active use.

The laboratory, and all the procedures and methods associated with it, can be transferred directly to the Commercial Plant, enabling a tried and tested laboratory set-up available on Day 1 of Commercial Plant commissioning.

About Giyani

Giyani is focused on becoming a dominant western-world producer of sustainable, low carbon high purity battery grade manganese for the electric vehicle (“EV”) industry. The Company has developed a proprietary hydrometallurgical process to produce battery-grade manganese (HPMSM), a lithium-ion battery cathode precursor material critical for EVs.

The Company secured financing of US$26m in 2024 from two strategic partners, ARCH Sustainable Resources Fund LP and the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa, enabling it to progress the K.Hill battery-grade manganese project in Botswana to construction by building and operating the Demo Plant and completing a Definitive Feasibility Study in 2025.

Additional information and corporate documents may be found on www.sedarplus.ca and on Giyani Metals Corp. website at https://giyanimetals.com

For media enquiries, please contact:

Matthew Lister
Head: Investor Relations
Email: mlister@archempartners.com
Mobile: +44 7780 049 074