Argonaut Gold Inc. announced that Marc Leduc, P.Eng. has been appointed Chief Operating Officer of the Company. Mr. Leduc's career spans more than 40 years and includes all aspects of the mining cycle.

He has been involved in the exploration, design, permitting, construction, commissioning, and operation of gold mines, including many complex heap leach projects. Mr. Leduc is both a professional mining engineer and a geologist. Since 2006, Marc has been in executive positions at several publicly traded companies, including Interim President and CEO of NewCastle Gold, one of the companies that comprised part of a three-way merger to form Equinox Gold.

At NewCastle Gold, Marc lead the design team that redesigned the Castle Mountain heap leach project in California into a mine containing 4.2 million ounces of reserve and is expected to be a 218,000 ounce a year gold producer. Marc was also an integral part of the design, permitting, construction and start-up team at Barrick Gold's Pierina Mine in Peru, a million ounce per year heap leach operation. In addition, Marc has worked on projects throughout the Americas, including Cerro San Pedro in Mexico, and Aurizona in Brazil.

Recently, Marc was COO at Kore Mining, focused on the Imperial heap leach Project, located in California. Lowe Billingsley, the Company's current Chief Operating Officer, is resigning to pursue other opportunities but will assist in the transition and stay on as an advisor to the Company through the first quarter of this year.