Clogau Operational Update

Alba Mineral Resources plc (AIM: ALBA), the gold and critical raw materials focused exploration and development company, is pleased to confirm the current state of progress following the resumption of drilling and blasting operations at the Llechfraith Target, Alba's priority gold target at the Clogau-St David's Gold Mine, Wales ("Clogau" or the "Mine").

A total of six blasts have been successfully completed in the current phase of operations, advancing a total of 8.1 metres. The total tonnage of blast material produced for sorting and processing to date is estimated at around 90 tonnes.

Following the most recent blast, there has been a pause in operations while roof support measures are implemented. Mucking out of the most recent blast will resume thereafter, expected to be in the next 24-48 hours.

Processing to date has involved taking samples from each of blasts 1-5 and processing them (a total of 5 tonnes) via crusher/impact crusher and centrifugal concentrator, to produce 83 kg of wet concentrate. This has been passed over the Wilfley table to yield 13 kg of wet, clean concentrate. This has been further cleaned to remove magnetite content, yielding 4 kg of wet final concentrate, and then dried to yield 3.360 kg of dry final concentrate.

Figure 1: Level 5 development post blast 6 and before mucking out of blast material

Current processing work involves taking samples from the most recent blast 6 to produce a bulk concentrate, which will be further refined as above. No comment can be made at this time about the gold content of the concentrate produced to date nor of the overall gold grade of the bulk sample produced to date. This will be assessed and reported once a representative volume of the total bulk sample has been processed and sent for assaying and/or refining.

Work continues to improve the throughput rates in the pilot processing plant, including by augmenting the level of water supply to the plant. A further update on expected processing timescales will be provided once these measures have been implemented.

Company Comment

George Frangeskides, Alba's Executive Chairman, commented:

"We are very pleased with the roll-out of the drilling and blasting programme to date. This represents the most significant development to take place at the Clogau-St David's Gold Mine in decades. Having completed eight metres of development, we are on track to reach our objective of completing around 20 metres of development by Easter.

"Given the limited capacity of the onsite pilot plant, which is largely constrained by the available space at the mine site, as expected processing rates have not been able to keep up with the significant volumes of material being extracted from underground. However, we continue to work on solutions to increase throughput rates at the plant."