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FOCUS MINERALS REPORTS ENCOURAGING FIRST ROUND RESULTS FROM COOLGARDIE NEAR MILL PROGRAMME

Focus Minerals Ltd. (ASX: FML) is pleased to announce the first round of results from its near mill exploration programme in Coolgardie, one of a number of new drilling programmes recently commenced.

The aim of the programmes across the group’s significant land holdings in the eastern goldfields region of Western Australia is to bolster Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves at its current operations as well as build a pipeline of future mines near its milling centres.

Highlights of the Coolgardie programme include high-grade intercepts at the Melanie Anne, Boundary and Jolly Britons targets near Focus’ Three Mile Hill plant.  Best intercepts include:

• Melanie Anne: 6m @ 97.0g/t; 34m @ 4.0g/t; 6m @ 5.7g/t; and 5m @ 5.3g/t
• Boundary: 7m @ 5.3g/t; 7m @ 4.0g/t; and 3m @ 5.9g/t
• Jolly Britons: 17m @ 3.7g/t; and 7m @ 6.6g/t.

“Our drilling energies and resources in 2013 are being channelled into developing and growing our near plant  Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves over the next 12 months,” said Focus Minerals Chairman and Acting CEO Don Taig.

“Our goal is to return the business to a stable position of having 2-3 years of Ore Reserves ahead of us which will in turn enable us to make the appropriate key business decisions in relation to mill expansions and recommissioning’s which we know can have a significant impact on the long term economics of our operations.

“These initial results in Coolgardie are encouraging as they continue to underscore the abundance of near surface targets in the region.”

The following summarises each programme:

Melanie Anne Area

Approximately 3,700m were planned to be drilled to determine the along strike and down-dip continuity of known mineralisation around the old workings in the Melanie Anne area. Historic drilling along this trend has delivered intercepts that include 7m @ 11.6g/t (including 2m @ 37g/t), as well as a 1m quartz vein containing 173g/t.

This programme is still in progress, but early results have been very encouraging with best intersections including 6m @ 97g/t (including 3m @ 191.4g/t) and 34m @ 4g/t (Figure 1 and Table 1).

The area contains many historical shafts and shallow workings with evidence of historical drilling around them. Three targets areas were identified, all of which occur at the basalt / dolerite contact where there appears to be dislocations within the dolerite unit, as shown in the aeromagnetics (Figure 2).  The drilling has so far intersected mineralisation within sheared dolerite with small quartz veins and strong biotite alteration (Melanie Anne North, Figure 3), intensely altered sheared dolerite (Melanie Anne West, Figure 3), and within diorite the has intruded into basalt and basalt / dolerite contact (Melanie Anne, Figure 3). Mineralisation in all areas is open along strike and at depth.

Boundary

The RC programme at Boundary (Figure 1) aims to extend known mineralisation down-dip to at least 50-60m below the historic Boundary pit.  A total of 8 holes for 1,371m were completed with best intersections of 7m @ 5.3g/t and 3m @ 5.9g/t (Table 2).

Hole BNDC009 (Figure 4) was designed to test a possible change in dip of the mineralisation associated with the sediment/dolerite contact. The results indicate the mineralisation changing from steeply north to steeply south. This indicates that the historical drilling has potentially been ineffective in testing the mineralisation at Boundary.

Further drilling is being planned to test this theory. The mineralisation within the dolerite remains open at depth (Figure 5).

Jolly Britons

A total 15 RC holes for 1,492m was completed at Jolly Britons (Figure 1) in follow up to a previous RC programme, which delivered a series of high-grade intercepts over a 500m strike interpreted to be associated with a significant mineralised fault structure extending from two major pits along a 6km strike to the south.

The widest and most consistent mineralisation so far appears to be around the Jolly Britons Main Shaft (Figure 6 & 7) where drilling has intersected what is believed to be the main Jolly Britons structure 27m below the surface (Table 3) with the hole containing a high percentage of mineralised quartz and returning a best intersection of 17m @ 3.7g/t. Mineralisation remains open to the south.

Further drilling is being planned to interpret the exact orientation of this structure.