Germanium Export Ban by China

• Rockfire potentially hosts substantial amounts of Germanium at its Flagship asset, Molai, Greece

Rockfire Resources plc (LON: ROCK), the base metal, precious metal, and critical mineral exploration company, wishes to inform the market that on 3rd December 2024, China officially banned all exports of the geologically rare mineral, Germanium to the United States of America. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-bans-exports-gallium-germanium-antimony-us-2024-12-03/

This could have highly significant positive consequences for the Company's 100%-owned Molaoi zinc project in Greece, which hosts germanium as a potentially valuable by-product from any future production.

Germanium is listed on both the US and the EU critical mineral lists. Rockfire has 1.09 million tonnes of zinc, 260,000 tonnes of lead, 19.1 million ounces of silver and germanium as a by-product at Molaoi. An internal, non-code-compliant assessment of germanium by-product is approximately 4.8 million tonnes, with an expected average grade of 21.9g/t Ge. Metallurgical tests demonstrate that grades of 117g/t Ge report to a zinc concentrate (Further details can be found in Rockfire's resource upgrade in the RNS dated 4th September 2024).

The Company's assessment of germanium content is not compliant yet with reporting codes, as more sampling is required to establish a critical mass of data points. Core drilled at Molaoi before the year 2021 was not analysed for germanium and therefore cannot be included in our current resource estimates. Germanium is expected to feed into future resource upgrades.

Germanium is incorporated into the glass components of important military applications, including long range weapons sighting scopes, infrared heat-seeking missile guidance systems and infrared night vision goggles.

Germanium also contributes to electronic computer/phone chips which are smaller in size, produce less electronic noise and are more stable over a wider range of temperatures and ultra-high frequencies.

Molaoi is a developing project to help Europe meet its ambitions for a domestic supply of critical raw materials, including the geologically rare mineral, germanium.

David Price, Chief Executive Officer of Rockfire, commented:

"This is huge news for Rockfire and the Molaoi project in Greece. With the banning of exports of germanium from China, this is likely to put drastic pressure on supply chains globally. Up until a few days ago, China supplied more than 60% of the world's germanium raw product. This ban may well impact prices, potentially increasing the price of germanium well beyond its current price of US$ 4,073/kg (US$ 4.06 million/tonne)."