Drilling and Testwork Update

RNS Number : 6418K

Tertiary Minerals PLC

20 July 2011

 



www.tertiaryminerals.com

("Tertiary" or "the Company")

20 July 2011

DRILLING & TESTWORK UPDATE

 SWEDISH & NORWEGIAN FLUORSPAR PROJECTS

Tertiary Minerals plc, a diversified mineral explorer and developer building a significant strategic position in the fluorspar sector, is pleased to provide the following updates on its Storuman (Sweden) and Lassedalen (Norway) fluorspar projects.

Highlights

§ Drill programme to commence at Storuman this week with objective to test:

Ø immediate extensions to recently announced Mineral Resource, and

Ø more speculative distal extensions to fluorspar mineralisation.

Secondary objective is to sterilise potential plant and tailings sites.

§ Metallurgical testwork programme at Lassedalen awarded to Wardell Armstrong aims to produce acid grade fluorspar from drill samples and provide data for preliminary economic evaluation.

Storuman Fluorspar Project, Sweden

The Storuman drill programme will commence this week and is planned to comprise ten holes.

Five holes will be drilled along a north-west to south-east traverse some 400m south-west of the current limit of drilling where the mineralisation remains open. This drill traverse, if successful, is close enough to the defined resource for the results to be included in future JORC Mineral Resource upgrades and could deliver additional shallow mineralisation for early-year mine planning.

A further five holes will be drilled at distances up to 2.7km away from the currently defined resource boundary. These five, more speculative, holes are designed to give more regional information on the distribution and depth of the fluorspar-hosting geological sequence, to find further extensions to mineralisation and also to sterilise a potential process plant and tailings site.

Lassedalen Fluorspar Project, Norway

Following the receipt of positive sampling results from archive drill core reported in May this year, a programme of metallurgical testwork has now been awarded to Wardell Armstrong in Cornwall.

The objective of the testwork programme, now started, is to confirm that acid grade fluorspar can be produced from Lassedalen as indicated by 1970s testwork reports. The new testwork programme will also provide critical information for incorporation into a preliminary economic evaluation scheduled for the Lassedalen project.

The testwork programme is expected to take 6 months to complete and significant results will be reported on an interim basis.

ENQUIRIES

Tertiary Minerals plc                                                                        Tel:  [phone]

Patrick Cheetham, Executive Chairman                                            www.tertiaryminerals.com

Seymour Pierce Limited                                                                  Tel: [phone]

Stewart Dickson (Corporate Finance)

Jeremy Stephenson (Corporate Broking)                                          

Yellow Jersey PR Limited                                                               Tel: [phone]

Dominic Barretto                                  

Notes:

1.       The information in this release has been compiled and reviewed by Mr. Patrick Cheetham (MIMMM, MAusIMM) who is a qualified person for the purposes of the AIM Note for Mining and Oil & Gas Companies dated June 2009.   Mr Cheetham is a Member of the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining and also a member of the Australasian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy.

2.       Reference to dates or timetables for exploration programmes and the receipt of results are based on the Company's expectations held at the date of this release. Such timetables often depend on outside contractors, weather conditions and permitting issues beyond the Company's control and are therefore subject to change.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Background to the Company

Tertiary Minerals plc is an AIM-quoted mineral exploration and development company building a significant strategic position in the fluorspar sector. Fluorspar is an essential raw material in the chemical, steel and aluminium industries and Tertiary controls an estimated four million tonnes of fluorspar across its two Scandinavian projects (Storuman in Sweden and Lassedalen in Norway).

A European Commission report recently named fluorspar as one of its 14 'critical mineral raw materials' for which a possible supply shortage would represent a substantial economic threat.  Fluorspar prices have been rising rapidly on the back of long term structural shortages of supply from China.

In mid-2010 the Company completed an economic scoping study for development of its Storuman fluorspar project in Sweden that demonstrated attractive project returns at an ex-port (FOB) China price equivalent to just US$287/tonne.

Recently the Company published its maiden open-pit mine constrained Minerals Resource for Storuman of 28 million tonnes grading 10.2% fluorspar containing 2.8 million tonnes of fluorspar mineral and spot prices for fluorspar have been reported as high as US$600/tonne ex-port (FOB) China.

The Company also has interests in exploration and development of Gold, Iron, Tantalum, Niobium and Rare-earths in Finland and Saudi Arabia. Shares in the Company trade on AIM and also on PLUS Markets (ticker symbol 'TYM').

 

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