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ECR Minerals plc (LON: ECR), the exploration and development company focused on gold in Australia, is pleased to announce high gold grades from recent in-situ rock chips sited within license EL006184 and newly acquired license EL006713 at the Creswick Project, Victoria, Australia.

ECR Minerals plc has 100% ownership of the Creswick Project which includes exploration tenements EL006907, EL006713 and EL006184. All licences reside north to north-east of the City of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The Company is exploring a number of parallel-gold mineralisation trends that are believed to extend 10km NE from the Nerrina Goldfields at Ballarat.

ECR CEO Andrew Haythorpe commented: “I am delighted to see these results from rock chip sampling. Along with the retest of the 2021 Creswick drill core (see RNS dated October 19 2022 here) and the parallel gold system identified at Davey Road and South Davey workings (see RNS dated December 22 2022 here), this work continues to support the Directors’ belief that Creswick could host an extended gold system. The Company’s  field team has remained on the ground at the property to continue further sampling”

The Board remain excited by the potential opportunities for discovery across ECR’s asset portfolio, and are eager to push on and undertake further work at the earliest possible opportunity. I look forward to reporting back to you with further updates.”        

HIGHLIGHTS

• Insitu rock chip sampling from two accessible underground locations at the Brewery Lane property (EL006184) and Mills Reef East (EL006713) have been completed.
• Highlights include 0.7m @ 189.42 g/t Au and 0.4m @ 86.51 g/t Au from (EL006184); 0.25m @ 441.23 g/t Au, 0.15m @ 140.83 g/t Au and 0.25m @ 24.92 g/t Au from (EL006713).
• Widths of reported grades are close to true width.
• Ground work continues through newly acquired tenements towards Ballarat.

Figures related to this announcement can be viewed here:

Figure 1: Overview map:

https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2023/Fig1_Creswick_Rock_Chips.png

Figure 2: Plan of rock chip locations EL006184:

https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2023/Fig2_Brewery_Lane_Chips.png

Figure 3: Plan of rock chip locations, Mills Reef East, EL006713:

https://www.ecrminerals.com/images/2023/Fig3_Mills_Reef_East_Chips.png

A complete list of sample results and locations is presented in Appendix 1 at the foot of this document.

BACKGROUND

Through ownership of the property at Brewery Lane, ECR geologists have taken advantage of the historical gold workings on the land, and, using their knowledge and experience from previous work in underground gold mines, have sampled a number of quartz veins within the old works (Sample ID’s CRSR058 to CRSR166A and CRSR390 to 461) and conducted an assessment of the ground conditions. Alongside this, the team have also undertaken preliminary sampling at ECR’s newly acquired tenement EL006713 at a location known as Mills Reef to generate a ‘geological snapshot’ of the area (Sample ID [NCR055 to NCR091]. Rock chips have been taken from exposed in-situ quartz veins where possible to assess possible gold grades within the tenement and correlate geology to grade.

BREWERY LANE

A 120m long adit (tunnel) forms part of the extensive network of historic mining works at the Company’s Brewery Lane property. The Directors understand the adit was originally driven into the hill in the 1800’s to access a mineralised system known as the Spring Hill Reef. This mineralised system parallels the Dimocks Main Shale (DMS), which lies to the west (see Figure 2 above).

Three quartz veins averaging 0.3m wide are accessible from 3 small crosscuts from the main adit. Veins in crosscut 1 and 3 show no gold however, the vein in the crosscut 2 revealed a best result of 0.15m @ 14.11 g/t Au (see Sample IDs CRSR098 to CRSR111 for all results in this area). At the end of the adit, the Spring Hill Reef was worked to the north over a strike of 20m, with veins systematically sampled over the roof and walls. The best results have come from an east dipping vein still present and visible on the wall of the adit. Rock chip samples taken from accessible points within this adit returned 0.7m @ 189.42 g/t Au and 0.4m @ 86.51 g/t. The remainder of this vein is not currently accessible. Results from duplicated samples of interest show a high variability in the results leading the board to conclude that, as with previous anomalous gold results reported from Creswick (see RNS from February 11 2022 here), coarse gold is present.

Rock chips have also been taken from remnant quartz samples on waste dumps along the line of reef workings going south from the adit (see Sample IDs [ ] to [ ]). The best result returned from this work revealed 4.79 g/t Au from a 0.5m wide vein in-situ at the top of a collapsed shaft.

MILLS REEF EAST

Sited within newly acquired Creswick tenement EL006713, the historic mining area known as Mills Reef lies approximately 4km south of Brewery Lane and is believed to lie along strike of the DMS corridor. LIDAR imagery reveals the extent of historic alluvial mining leading north up to a ridge line at the centre of the area (see Figure 3 above). There are 2 accessible locations to some of the historic underground workings. The adit leading west from the gully accesses part of the Mills Reef while a smaller adit has been driven to the east accessing Mills Reef East. Both adits have been sampled, although to date results have only been received for Mills Reef East (see Sample IDs NCR055 to NCR091. The best results from the East adit include 0.25m @ 441.23 g/t Au, 0.15m @ 140.83 g/t Au, 0.25m @ 24.92 g/t Au and other similarly good grades presented in Appendix 1 below. Geologically, the best results come from a series of shallow plunging spur veins that propagate from a fold/fault system. In appearance the historic workings are small scale however, the presence of extremely high gold grades and the possibility considered by the Board that these high grade structures at could be repeated at depth and along strike lend considerable credence to the presence of an extended gold system. It is also worth noting that such gold mineralisation is not untypical for the Central Victorian gold belt.

NEXT STEPS

This collection of high-grade results from remnant gold workings has encouraged the ECR geology team and the Board as to what could potentially await discovery in the ground across ECR’s three Creswick tenements. Soil sampling is already underway at Mills Reef area with further work planned. The priority areas for sampling will be along strike and the projected up-dip of mineralised veins sampled in the adits. The Board expects that this work will provide the necessary data to support a drilling program to follow up on anomalies in due course. With the availability of near immediate drill access to the Brewery Lane property and the location of some of ECR’s successful drill intercepts between 2019 and 2021, the next drill program will follow up on the DMS (Slades Reef) and test the Spring Hill Reef. Drill targets will also be planned and executed at the new tenements to the south of EL006184, including the Mills Reef area, while at the same time, on-ground work including further rock chip sampling and soil geochemistry will continue further south to delineate new drill targets

The Board will report back as these plans progress throughout 2023.

REVIEW OF ANNOUNCEMENT BY QUALIFIED PERSON

This announcement has been reviewed by Adam Jones, Technical Director of Exploration at ECR Minerals plc. Adam Jones is a professional geologist and is a Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists (MAIG). He is a qualified person as that term is defined by the AIM Note for Mining, Oil and Gas Companies.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

ABOUT ECR MINERALS PLC

ECR Minerals is a mineral exploration and development company. ECR’s wholly owned Australian subsidiary Mercator Gold Australia Pty Ltd (“MGA”) has 100% ownership of the Bailieston and Creswick gold projects in central Victoria, Australia, has six licence applications outstanding which includes one licence application lodged in eastern Victoria. (Tambo gold project). MGA is currently drilling at the Bailieston Blue Moon Project (EL5433) and undertaking geochemical exploration on the Creswick (EL6148) project and has an experienced exploration team with significant local knowledge in the Victoria Goldfields and wider region.

ECR also owns 100% of an Australian subsidiary LUX Exploration Pty Ltd (“LUX”) which has three approved exploration permits covering 946 km² over a relatively unexplored area in Queensland, Australia.

Following the sale of the Avoca, Moormbool and Timor gold projects in Victoria, Australia to Fosterville South Exploration Ltd (TSX-V: FSX) and the subsequent spin-out of the Avoca and Timor projects to Leviathan Gold Ltd (TSX-V: LVX), Mercator Gold Australia Pty Limited has the right to receive up to A$2 million in payments subject to future resource estimation or production from projects sold to Fosterville South Exploration Limited.

ECR holds a 70% interest in the Danglay gold project; an advanced exploration project located in a prolific gold and copper mining district in the north of the Philippines, which has a 43-101 compliant resource. ECR also holds a royalty on the SLM gold project in La Rioja Province, Argentina and can potentially receive up to US$2.7 million in aggregate across all licences.

Appendix One

Table 1: All rock chip results from sampling the Spring Hill Adit, Brewery Lane, EL006184. Highlighted results in bold.

(Grid reference GDA94 Zone 54).

Table 2: Reported rock chip results from the Mills Reef Adit East, EL006713 Highlighted results in bold.

(Grid reference GDA94 Zone 54).