Five Uncounted Zones Could Lift ValOre's 2.2-Million-Ounce Estimate

• Pedra Branca's resource estimate, released in 2022, holds 2.2 million ounces of platinum, palladium, and gold in 63.3 million metric tons grading 1.08 grams per metric ton.
• The estimate is built on 7 resource zones and more than 40,000 meters of drilling.
• Five further zones were drilled in 2023 over more than 6,000 meters and are not included in that estimate.
• ValOre has scheduled a Pedra Branca resource update for the third quarter of 2026, which includes recently drilled targets.
• A preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for Pedra Branca is targeted for the fourth quarter of 2026, with licensing and an environmental impact assessment (EIA) in the first quarter of 2027.

What Has Happened

ValOre Metals Corp. (TSX-V: VO | OTCQB: KVLQF | FSE: KEQ0) has scheduled a resource update for Pedra Branca, its platinum, palladium, and gold project in Ceará State, Brazil, in the third quarter of 2026, and that update includes recently drilled targets. A preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the same 51,000-hectare property is targeted for the quarter after that, with licensing and an environmental impact assessment (EIA) following in the first quarter of 2027. 

The estimate that the update will revise was released in 2022. Five zones drilled in 2023 are not included in it, which makes the coming revision a question of what the company already holds in the ground as much as what its field crews find this year. 

What the 2022 Estimate Counts, & What It Leaves Out

The figure the market works from at Pedra Branca is more than four years old. It was released in 2022 with an effective date of March 8, 2022, and it gives the project an inferred resource of 2.2 million ounces of platinum, palladium, and gold in 63.3 million metric tons grading 1.08 grams per metric ton. An inferred resource is the lowest-confidence category a technical report can assign, based on sufficient drilling to estimate quantity and grade but not enough to support detailed mine planning. 

ValOre built that estimate on 7 resource zones and more than 40,000 meters of drilling. Four of those zones, Esbarro, Curiu, Cedro, and Cana Brava, together hold more than 1 million ounces of platinum, palladium, and gold, and 2 further zones to the south, Trapia and Massape, hold more than 1 million ounces between them. All 7 are near surface, which allows a project at this stage to consider low-cost mining before an economic study has priced it. 

What the estimate does not account for are 5 more zones drilled in 2023, totaling more than 6,000 meters. They are new exploration zones not included in the previous resource estimate, and the dates explain why: the estimate took effect in March 2022, more than a year before the rigs reached that ground. No tonnage, grade, or ounce figure has been published for any of the 5, so their contribution to a revised estimate cannot be quantified from what the company has disclosed. The material behind the coming update was paid for and drilled three years ago.   

What the 2023 Drilling Added to the District 

The 2023 program produced a discovery and 5 new zones. The discovery is Salvador, and a north-south exploration trend is emerging across the property. The project now holds 2 generations of work: the 2022 resource deposits, the 2023 exploration drill targets, and ground that has been identified but not yet drilled. Salvador is grouped with Cana Brava, Cedro, Curiu, and Esbarro in a cluster that holds more than 1 million ounces, plus the Salvador target.

The drilling behind all of this accumulated over 2 ownership periods. Historic operators put 30,000 meters into the ground, and between 2020 and 2024, ValOre added 23,534 meters at a cost of US$10 million, which doubled the inferred resource from 1.1 million to 2.2 million ounces. The crews doing that work were largely in place before ValOre arrived.  

Vice President of Exploration of ValOre Metals Corp., Thiago Diniz, traces the drilling ValOre inherited back to the operators who ran the ground before it:

"Previous operators had this project for two decades. They developed this local workforce, people that were used to doing soils, rock, geophysics, and running drill rigs and drilling programs."

Exploration in 2026 works the ground between those zones instead of replacing them. ValOre is using VRIFY technology to guide regional prospecting and advancing the Pitombeiras target, an 8-kilometer mineralized trend, through geological mapping, rock and soil geochemistry, and Trado auger drilling. Geochemistry here means chemical testing of soil and rock samples, and auger drilling is a shallow method that screws a bit into weathered material without a full rig. 

From the Resource Update to the Economic Study

ValOre has published a schedule in which each step supplies the next, with gaps of a single quarter between them. Economics are run on the resource estimate that exists when the work is done, so the version delivered in the third quarter is the one the study in the fourth quarter of 2026 has to model.

The work for that study started earlier. ValOre appointed an engineering company to conduct the PEA in the fourth quarter of 2025 and began metallurgical testwork intended to demonstrate favorable economics. Flotation and leaching testwork, 2 ways of separating metal from crushed rock, continue in partnership with the University of Cape Town. Through 2026, the company is advancing metallurgical and engineering studies to support development planning and continuing preliminary water and power supply studies.    

One development task points back to the drilling rather than forward to the economics. ValOre is relogging historical drill cores from Curiu, Esbarro, and Cedro, reading stored cores a second time to refine how mineralization is controlled and to sharpen mine-planning assumptions. That work changes no ounce count on its own, and it is the kind of input a study needs before it can put a mine plan around a resource. No capital cost, operating cost, or production profile for Pedra Branca exists yet because the study that would produce them has not been published.  

Broader Context   

Pedra Branca and Stillwater West are the 2 assets in the peer group ValOre measures itself against with no economic study, and the comparison turns on grade as much as on study stage. Waterberg in South Africa, held in a joint venture by Platinum Group Metals Ltd., carries 23.4 million ounces of palladium, platinum, gold, and rhodium in the proven and probable categories at 2.96 grams per metric ton, with a definitive feasibility study completed in 2024. Luanga in Pará State, Brazil, held by Bravo Mining Corp., holds 10.4 million ounces of palladium equivalent in the measured and indicated categories, grading 2.01 to 2.04 grams per metric ton, with a PEA completed in 2025. Both grade above Pedra Branca's 1.08 grams per metric ton.

The North American projects run the other way. Generation Mining Ltd.'s Marathon project in Ontario holds 2.6 million ounces of palladium and 0.8 million ounces of platinum in the proven and probable categories at 0.64 and 0.20 grams per metric ton, with a feasibility study from 2025, and Stillwater Critical Minerals Corp.'s Stillwater West in Montana holds an inferred resource of 2.0 million ounces of palladium and 1.3 million ounces of platinum at 0.25 and 0.15 grams per metric ton. Pedra Branca's grade is above both.        

Diniz measures Brazil's technical workforce against the one he worked alongside in Canada:

"The geologists and engineers that graduated in this environment are some of the best in the world, and I've seen that really closely when I had a chance to work in Canada."   

The supply picture behind platinum and palladium is concentrated. Approximately 90% of the world's platinum group element reserves are in South Africa, several major platinum operations have closed or been suspended since 2016, and only 2 major greenfield platinum group element mines, meaning mines on ground with no previous operation, have near-term production. Brazil graduates more mining engineers than the US and Canada combined, and a project moving from an estimate to a study draws on that pool. 

What to Watch Next 

The third-quarter resource update is the first disclosure to read, and the specific thing to look for is whether the 5 zones from 2023 are named among the recently drilled targets it includes. A revised estimate that names them is a larger resource base built from already-paid-for drilling; one that does not is a restatement of the same 7 zones.

After that, the sequence is short, and the dates are the company's own. The PEA follows in the fourth quarter of 2026 and will give Pedra Branca its first capital cost, operating cost, and production profile. Licensing and the EIA come in the first quarter of 2027. Alongside them, mapping, geochemistry, and auger drilling continue at the 8-kilometer Pitombeiras trend, and the relogging at Curiu, Esbarro, and Cedro feeds mine-planning assumptions into the study. An investor reading Pedra Branca today will see a published schedule, a grade above North American comparables, and more than 6,000 meters of 2023 drilling that the current estimate does not include.    

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