VIENNA, Austria – August 5, 2026 – Ekometall Inc. (“Ekometall” or the “Company”) today announced the completion of an independent, country-wide catchment analysis of Austria’s national stream sediment geochemical database. The work was carried out by consulting geochemist Dr. Dennis Arne of Telemark Geosciences Pty Ltd., who reprocessed data from 34,364 samples collected across Austria between 1978 and 2010 and delivered modern, deposit-specific geochemical targeting layers covering the entire country. The layers were built for direct integration into Ekometall’s GIS and machine learning target-generation workflows, giving the Company a proprietary, nationwide geochemical screen across a jurisdiction central to the EU Critical Raw Materials Act.
Highlights
- Independent catchment analysis of Austria’s national stream sediment database, including 34,364 samples collected 1978–2010, completed by Dr. Dennis Arne of Telemark Geosciences, believed to be the first systematic, country-scale catchment reprocessing of the Austrian national survey by the exploration industry;
- Catchments modelled for 33,792 samples across the whole country and attributed with catchment geology, enabling levelling of the geochemistry for variable bedrock and for downstream dilution;
- Deposit specific geochemical models generated for Mississippi Valley-type (MVT) lead-zinc, polymetallic volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS), and orogenic gold pathfinder associations;
- Outputs delivered as catchment shapefiles and percentile-gridded GeoTIFFs across four regional blocks, purpose-built for integration with the Company’s geological, geophysical and AI/machine learning datasets;
- Analysis identified portions of Ekometall’s licence areas that remain comparatively under-sampled, defining clear priorities for follow-up field geochemistry, while surfacing new catchment-scale anomalies not visible in the raw data; and
- Reinforces Ekometall’s data-driven, first-mover approach to Austria, a jurisdiction central to the EU Critical Raw Materials Act.
Ryan Finlay, CEO of Ekometall, commented: “Dr. Arne’s work confirms our reading of Austria’s known districts and points us toward compelling new anomalies the raw data alone would not have flagged. This is a major component of the geochemistry piece of the target-generation engine we have been building.”
An Independent, Nationwide Geochemical Layer
Between 1978 and 2010, Austrian authorities collected 34,364 stream sediment samples nationwide across two campaigns, at sampling densities reaching as high as ten samples per square kilometre in some areas, several times denser than a conventional national reconnaissance survey. Ekometall engaged Telemark Geosciences to apply catchment analysis, a well-established geochemical technique, to this dataset at a country-wide scale, transforming point samples into geologically levelled, deposit-focused targeting layers.
Catchments were modelled for 33,792 samples with samples in areas of low topographic relief and a small number of very large or trans-border catchments excluded from further analysis. Each catchment was attributed with lithological information from the 1:500,000-scale digital geology of Austria, allowing the geochemistry of individual samples to be levelled for variations in background bedrock. Anomalous residuals were then corrected for downstream dilution using catchment area to estimate the geochemical “productivity” associated with potential mineralization exposed within each catchment.
Deposit-Specific Targeting and Validation
Using the levelled geochemistry, Dr. Arne constructed additive geochemical models tailored to the principal deposit styles present in Austria, MVT lead-zinc, polymetallic VMS, and orogenic gold pathfinder associations, and compared each spatially against catalogues of known mineral occurrences grouped by commodity.
The MVT model shows strong spatial agreement with documented lead-zinc occurrences in the Drau region, including the historic Bleiberg district, and the VMS copper-zinc-cobalt-silver model tracks known copper occurrences across the country. Critically, the geology-levelled layers also reveal elevated catchments that are not apparent in the raw geochemical data, generating new, independently derived exploration prospects for follow up.
The complete set of layers, including raw element grids, iron-corrected residuals, principal component layers, geology levelled residuals and the deposit type models, has been delivered to Ekometall’s technical team for integration and ranking.
Nature of the Work and Next Steps
The catchment analysis is a first pass, target-generation exercise based on the reprocessing of historical survey data. The resulting anomalies and model scores identify catchments warranting further evaluation; they are not exploration results and do not represent mineralization. As is inherent to regional stream sediment datasets of this age, the compilation lacks sample-level metadata (such as grain size and analytical digestion), some sample locations carry positional uncertainty, and certain anomalies may reflect surface contamination or data artifacts rather than mineralization. Notably, the survey did not include gold assays. Gold prospectivity has therefore been assessed indirectly using pathfinder elements.
Ekometall will prioritize and ground-truth the highest ranked catchments through targeted field programs, and follow-up sampling in under-sampled license areas will be guided by the catchment framework established in this study.
About Telemark Geosciences
Telemark Geosciences is a specialist geochemical consultancy founded in 2010 in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a second office established in north-east Victoria, Australia in 2018. Led by founder and principal consultant Dr. Dennis Arne (P.Geo. British Columbia, RPGeo and Fellow, Australian Institute of Geoscientists), the firm advises the international minerals industry on geochemical data compilation, survey design, QA/QC, data interpretation and integration, and technical reporting. For more information, visit telemarkgeosciences.com.
About Ekometall
Ekometall is an emerging critical minerals exploration company focused on unlocking Austria’s significant precious and base metal potential across the country’s historic mining districts. The Company has assembled a specialized, Austria-based technical team that applies AI-assisted analysis to digitize and interpret over five centuries of previously inaccessible geological records, transforming archival data into actionable exploration targets.
With a dominant first-mover land position exceeding 10,000 km² and a demonstrated ability to efficiently permit and execute drilling programs, Ekometall offers global mining partners a compelling entry point into a favorable European jurisdiction. The Company’s combination of local expertise, modern exploration methods, and extensive mineral tenure establishes Ekometall as the essential gateway for accessing the critical raw materials vital to Europe’s energy transition and industrial future.
For more information, visit ekometallgroup.com.
Contact
For more information on Ekometall’s projects or for investor relations inquiries, please contact:
Ryan Finlay
Managing Director & CEO
e. rfinlay@ekometallgroup.com
m. +1 703 229 2312
Disclaimer
The geochemical targeting layers described in this release are derived from the reprocessing of historical stream sediment survey data compiled by third parties. The anomalies, residuals, and model scores presented are intended solely for exploration target generation and do not represent proven or measured mineralization. The underlying survey data have not been independently verified by the Company, and the interpretations are subject to the assumptions and limitations inherent to catchment analysis of regional geochemical datasets, including uncertainties in sample location, the absence of sample-level metadata, and the potential for anomalies arising from contamination or data artifacts. Modern technical work, including field sampling, drilling, and geological modelling, is required before any target can be characterized as economic mineralization.
