Joint Venture

Alba Mineral Resources PLC
11 April 2006

                           Alba Mineral Resources plc
                           ('Alba' or 'the Company')


           Alba Enters Joint Venture With Boliden Tara Mines Limited.

Alba Mineral Resources plc (AIM: ALBA), the UK based exploration company, is
pleased to announce that it has signed a Joint Venture arrangement (the Joint
Venture) with Boliden Tara Mines Limited (Tara) on 31 March 2006 to explore for
gold at the Company's Lough Gowna licence block in Ireland. Alba and Tara each
hold a 50% interest in the licence block which the two companies jointly applied
for and were awarded on 27 May 2004.


Under the cooperative venture both parties have committed to fund an initial
study of the Lough Gowna block's potential for palaeoplacer and shear hosted
gold mineralization.


The Joint Venture has compiled and digitally acquired all relevant historical
exploration data for the project and intends to shortly commence exploration
which will focus on the quartz-pebble conglomerate target-horizon. An ultra-fine
stream sediment survey is planned during April 2006, with any highlighted
anomalous areas to be subjected to detailed follow-up surveys to generate
drill-targets.



ENDS


For further information contact:


Lance O'Neill, Chairman
Alba Mineral Resources plc             Tel: [phone]

Wilson Robb, Exploration Director
Alba Mineral Resources plc             Tel: [phone]


Justine Howarth/ Victoria Thomas
Parkgreen Communications.              Tel: [phone]

Liam Murray
City Financial Associates              Tel: [phone]



Notes to Editors


Alba Mineral Resources PLC is a junior explorer with a diversified commodity
portfolio, primarily nickel, gold, copper, cobalt and platinum group metals,
focussed on the Appalachian-Caledonide trend, a zone extending from the eastern
seaboard of North America to Scandinavia. Alba currently has interests in a
number of well researched properties in Scotland and Ireland, owned in its own
right or in conjunction with other parties.



Background


The Lough Gowna Block gold project consists of six contiguous exploration
licences totaling 222.50 square kilometres at the southwestern end of the Slieve
Glah Shear Zone, on the south-western margins of the Longford-Down Inlier,
approximately 20km north-east of Longford Town, Co. Longford.

The main target of exploration activity on the block is gold-bearing quartz
pebble conglomerates which have been previously identified in the lower
Carboniferous clastic beds that unconformably overly Ordovician and Silurian
turbidites. Gold has been panned from streams in the area and a sample of quartz
pebble conglomerate outcrop taken by Tara Mines Ltd. in 1992 returned a value of
1.0 g/t gold.


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