Re: Placing

Ovoca Resources PLC
01 March 2004

Ovoca Resources Plc Raises €575,000 for Gold Exploration Projects in Sweden





Ovoca Resources Plc ( OVG.I Dublin ; OVG.L London ) is pleased to announce that
it has successfully raised €379,652 in a placing of 3,796,520 shares at 10 cents
each. The placing was underwritten jointly by Balvaird Resources Plc and
Pembroke Investment Group and was over subscribed. In addition Ovoca has also
raised  €197,855 by the sale of some of the lands that Ovoca owned in Keel, Co
Longford.



The majority of these funds will be used to prove up our Gold properties in
Sweden.



In December we appointed Jeremy Martin, a geologist with a number of years of
experience on the ground in Sweden, to Ovoca's board as our chief operations
officer. Since then he has identified a number of additional licence areas which
we have acquired based on aerial magnetic surveys, till sampling and having
identified gold and copper existing in samples taken from boulders. A limited
number of samples of Gold in bedrock have shown grades of up to 3 grams tonne
but extensive exploration will need to be carried out.



Weather in Sweden restricts exploration on the ground due to snow coverage. We
have a window of opportunity from April to November.  We will be using two
exploration teams on the ground under the supervision of Jeremy Martin. The
first team will carry out trenching and drilling on licence areas acquired from
MinMet plc which are at an advanced stage. The second team will work on the new
licence areas to identify trenching and drilling targets which will result in an
active exploration programme for Ovoca throughout the available season.



The first target in April will be our Klippen Licence. Grades outlined to date
are highly encouraging with 2.3 grams/tonne gold over a 20 metre area with 6.4
grams/tonne gold over a 5 metre interval. The same 20 metre area returned
greater than 1% Copper. The mineralised zone is open to depth and along strike
to the NW and SE.



The second target area will be Ovoca's Sjoliden-Krokliden licence area where
gold in till samples, and gold and copper in boulders have been identified. Also
gold in bedrock has been identified and an aerial magnetic survey has shown up a
NW-SE continuous trend about 5 kilometres long and 2 kilometres wide which will
have to be extensively tested over coming months. This area is adjacent to
Dragon Mining's new Svartliden gold mine which will be going into production
this year which has 2.6 million tonnes at 4.8 grams/tonne gold containing
403,000 ounces. Dragon expects direct cash operating costs at its mine to be
US$165 an ounce.



Commenting on the upcoming exploration programme in Sweden Richard O'Shea CEO

stated, " Ovoca is highly optimistic of a successful outcome to our exploration
programme in Sweden given the very prospective licence areas we have acquired.
These properties all have gold occurrences on them and are very near existing
licence areas with proven reserves on what is now called the "Gold Line" in
Sweden.  Ovoca is also in advanced discussions on a number of other
joint-venture projects at present and expects to be in a position to make
announcements on these in due course.  With these and our Aurum Exploration
joint venture on our Zinc licences in Newcastle West, County Limerick, Ovoca is
looking forward to an active and very interesting year ahead of us."









For more information contact



Richard O'Shea            CEO    [phone]

John O'Connor            CFO    [phone]











This announcement has been issued through the Companies Announcement Service of

The Irish Stock Exchange















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