How Homeland Nickel Signed a Buyer for an Estimated 20,000 Tonnes of Concentrate a Year

Red Flat is a patch of reddish, weathered ground on federal land 15 kilometres southeast of Gold Beach, Oregon. Homeland Nickel Inc., listed on the TSX Venture Exchange as SHL, holds it as 84 lode mining claims, and on October 1, 2026 it signed a binding agreement with a buyer for what that ground may one day produce.

The buyer is Westwin Elements, which describes itself as scaling America's only Class 1 nickel refinery. Under a binding offtake agreement announced that day, Westwin would take an estimated 20,000 tonnes of nickel concentrate a year from Red Flat, and would pay for the feasibility study if Homeland's next two reports satisfy it.

An offtake is a promise to buy, signed before there is anything to sell

The term sounds technical. The idea is simple.

Picture a baker who agrees, in writing, to buy all the flour a new mill will grind, before the mill is built. The miller now knows who the customer is. A lender or partner looking at the mill knows it too. Nobody has paid for flour yet, because there is no flour.

An offtake agreement is that promise, made between a mining company and the business that will process what it mines. It names the buyer and the product, usually with a rough quantity. Many also say who pays for what along the way. By itself, the agreement moves neither money nor nickel.

Homeland's version, as described in its October 1 release, has four parts:

1. Westwin receives an estimated 20,000 tonnes of nickel concentrate a year, mined and concentrated by Homeland at Red Flat.
2. The offtake for Red Flat is exclusive to Westwin, which may also benefit from offtake on Homeland's other properties.
3. The agreement is binding, and it sits alongside Westwin's existing feedstock arrangements with other suppliers.
4. Homeland first completes an updated mineral resource estimate and a preliminary economic assessment. If Westwin is satisfied with the assessment, Westwin fully funds a bankable feasibility study, including permitting, drilling and environmental work.

Concentrate is the first product of a mine: rock that has been crushed and upgraded so the metal is richer, ready to ship to a refinery. The release sets no price for it. Revenue would come later, from a mine still to be built and at a price the two companies will agree.

The agreement does change the order of costs. A bankable feasibility study is the detailed engineering report lenders rely on before they finance a mine, and it is usually the most expensive document a junior pays for. Here the refiner has agreed to carry it.

The two reports that set the agreement in motion

Homeland's job under the agreement is to write two documents. A mineral resource estimate states how much nickel-bearing material is in the ground and at what grade, to the standard a qualified geologist will sign. A preliminary economic assessment is the first-pass study that puts a mine plan, a capital cost and an operating cost around that estimate.

President and chief executive Stephen Balch said in the October 1 release that the company expects to give Westwin both reports in the first or second quarter of 2027. Westwin then has 90 days to review them and begin the feasibility study. Balch also said that the updated estimate and assessment need no further permitting or drilling.

The no-drilling point matches the company's release of September 17, 2026, which reported that the data recompilation for Red Flat and Cleopatra was complete, and that the qualified person would produce updated estimates without new field work or re-drilling of the original auger holes. The September release expected one or both reports during the fourth quarter of 2026. The October 1 release, the later of the two, puts delivery of the pair to Westwin in the first half of 2027.

Balch was also candid about distance. In the October 1 release he said the company has a long way to go before mining at Red Flat.

The ground has been drilled before

Red Flat is a laterite, which means the nickel sits in soil and soft rock weathered near the surface.

The figures Homeland cites come from drilling between 2007 and 2009. The October 1 release gives a historical estimate of 18.8 million tons grading 0.84 per cent nickel. The release states Red Flat in short tons, as the old U.S. work did, while the offtake and Cleopatra are given in metric tonnes.

Inside that total, 10.4 million tons are measured and indicated material at 0.88 per cent, counted above a cut-off grade of 0.7 per cent. A cut-off grade is the minimum richness counted as ore. Cobalt was assayed in that work and never previously disclosed.

A historical estimate is an older figure that a company may repeat, with a warning, until a qualified person redoes the work to current rules. Homeland gives that warning in the release: a qualified person has not done enough work to classify the estimate as a current mineral resource, and the company is not treating it as one. The 2027 resource estimate is the step that would turn the old numbers into current ones, or revise them.

Cleopatra, the company's other named property, carries a historical resource of about 40 million tonnes of laterite at 0.93 per cent nickel, per the company's boilerplate in the same release. The September 17 release said an SK-1300 report for Cleopatra, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's equivalent of a Canadian technical report, would help Patriot Nickel Corp. with a planned U.S. listing. Patriot is a U.S. company formed to develop nickel from U.S. deposits through an agreement with Homeland, according to Homeland's June 4, 2026 release.

The Forest Service has accepted the Red Flat drill plan

Permits are where many U.S. projects slow down, and Homeland has moved several steps on them in 2026.

On June 4, 2026, Homeland and Patriot appointed SLR International Corporation to handle exploration permitting at Cleopatra and Red Flat. The release said SLR would oversee changes to the Plans of Operations already submitted and support engagement with the federal FAST-41 Permitting Council. It will also help with permitting for 2027 exploration. A Plan of Operations is the document a company files with a federal land agency describing exactly what it will do on the ground.

On September 17, the company reported that the U.S. Forest Service had accepted its Plan of Operations for a sonic drill program at Red Flat. Sonic drilling vibrates a steel pipe into soft ground and brings up an unbroken core, which suits a laterite. The next steps named in that release were the federal environmental evaluation and a cultural review. The company described both as well under way, with field work complete. A revised plan for Cleopatra was to be submitted to the Forest Service the following week.

Balch said in that release that he hoped to complete the sonic program in October, subject to crew availability. As of November 3, 2026 the company had issued no release reporting that the program had started or finished.

September's C$3.04 million and who took part

Homeland closed a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of C$3,040,000, according to the September 17 release. A non-brokered placement is a sale of new shares arranged by the company itself, without an investment dealer.

The company sold 8,000,000 units at C$0.38 each. Each unit carries one share and half a warrant. A whole warrant buys one more share at C$0.50 for two years. No finder's fees were paid.

Directors and officers bought 465,098 of those units. The company said the money goes to property payments and exploration, with the rest for general corporate purposes. The same release reported a renegotiation with RAB Capital, under which Homeland issued shares in place of milestone cash payments and acquired all of the royalty rights on the property involved.

The 8,000,000 new shares are about 3.4 per cent of the 235,309,927 common shares Homeland reported outstanding at the date of its interim MD&A, filed on SEDAR+ on September 29, 2026. The table below sets out the rest of that filing.

The placement created 4,000,000 warrants. Exercised in full at C$0.50, they would bring in a further C$2,000,000.

Homeland's condensed interim statements for the three months ended July 31, 2026 were filed with the MD&A. They show the balance sheet as it stood before the September placement.

The MD&A reports working capital of C$2,369,872 at July 31, 2026 and says expenses will be paid from the sale of company assets or through private placements. Note 1 of the statements says the company's ability to continue as a going concern depends on obtaining sufficient capital from investors, a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt on that ability.

The company also disclosed a one-time fee of C$20,000 plus taxes to AI Power Marketing Ltd. for a video interview with Balch, an arm's-length arrangement with no equity or performance terms, per the same release.

Shares closed at C$0.40 on November 3, 2026, unchanged on the day, on 155,200 shares on the TSX Venture Exchange, per end-of-day data read at 16:59 ET on November 3, 2026. Homeland also trades in Frankfurt under the symbol QP6, WKN A40A6Y and ISIN CA43740Q1072, according to Deutsche Börse's page for the security.

Why a U.S. refiner wants Oregon nickel

The U.S. Geological Survey's final 2025 List of Critical Minerals, released November 6, 2025, names nickel among 60 minerals it calls vital to the economy and national security, citing its use in high-strength steel and rechargeable batteries.

Westwin's chief executive Kaleigh Long described the agreement in the October 1 release as a step toward a secure, fully domestic nickel supply chain, linking Homeland's Oregon production with Westwin's U.S. refining for manufacturers and the defence industrial base. The refiner's pilot plant is in Lawton, Oklahoma, per the same release, and its refinery uses carbonyl refining, a process that turns nickel into a gas compound and back into metal of high purity.

The next documents on the calendar

Homeland has completed several of the steps that come before a mine study. It has a signed buyer and a federal drill plan accepted, and its old drilling data has been recompiled for a qualified person. If Westwin is satisfied with the economic assessment, the most expensive study on the path moves off Homeland's own budget.

The federal environmental and cultural reviews for Red Flat are under way, and as of November 3, 2026 no release had reported the sonic program started or finished. The current resource and the economic study come next, and the company has said both will reach Westwin in the first or second quarter of 2027.