ECR Minerals plc provided additional results from its drilling programme at the Kuboid Hill site in its Creswick tenement.  Significantly, this drilling campaign has demonstrated quartz/gold mineralisation continuity in the Creswick area with results having the hallmarks of a potential future small scale operation. Highlights: Two high grade results of 8.87g/t Au and 8.06g/t Au over 1 metre. Far more significant is the extensive broad mineralisation demonstrated in several holes where contiguous gold is present at 3.05g/t Au over 3 metres, 2.25g/t Au over 4 metres and 1g/t Au over 5 metres.

This compares very favourably with historical mining operations elsewhere in Victoria with broad mineralisation where those grades averaged around 0.7 g/t Au. Aggregated 51 metres of mineralized quartz. The drilling returned significant intercepts with evidence of anomalous gold within 14 of the 15 holes drilled.

Bulk sample testing at Creswick has indicated in the past both greater prevalence and higher grades of gold and this is being carried out now on the results for Kuboid Hill. A total of 1,025 metres of reverse circulation drilling was completed at Kuboid Hill on 16 February 2024 ("Kuboid Hill Programme"). This was the second part of an extended reverse circulation drilling programme, following on from an original drilling programme of 522 metres completed at Davey Road where ECR reported a best overall grade gold of 41.03g/t Au (for full details of the results see announcement dated 12 February 2024).

The Kuboid Hill Programme was designed to follow up on the Company's anomalous gold soil sampling campaign that was completed in 2022 which indicated the potential for a broader system which can now be seen in the today's results. The drilling also tested best practices for first pass drilling evaluation at Creswick where operators have had historical challenges of reporting a representative broad mineralisation gold grade due to the coarse and random nature of gold that is very often present in Central Victoria. ECR has now received laboratory results for 15 out of the 17 holes drilled at Kuboid Hill, comprising leaching and fire assay.

As with the Davey Road analysis, due to the nature of the course gold expected in this region, ECR then utilises dry-blowing and pan concentration onthe 'leftovers' from the preliminary drilling resultsto reduce the gold bias and potentially coalesce the overall Au g/t result. These bulk samples results will follow in due course with the results from the final two holes also anticipated very soon. The best individual grades so far are from two holes: 1m at 8.87g/t Au (hole KHRC001) and 1m at 8.06g/t Au (hole KHRC016).

However, what is far more significant is the extensive broad mineralisation demonstrated in several holes where contiguous gold is present at 3.05g/t Au over 3 metres, 2.25g/t Au over 4 metres and 1g/t Au over 5 metres. The drilling recorded intercepts greater than 0.5 g/t Au average over a total of 51 metres with the broadest identified mineralised zone being over 15 metres (KHRC010). All intercepts align along strike and dip to the same mineralised zone under Kuboid Hill.

Previous drilling campaigns within the Creswick project have only identified narrow veins (often less than 1 metre) and high-grade gold mineralisation styles. Whilst this is still early stage, this drilling campaign at Kuboid Hill is the first time that ECR has demonstrated that broad-scale quartz/gold mineralisation exists in the Creswick area. Also significantly broad mineralisation is also present at shallow vertical depths.

This compares very well with historical small-scale commercial mining operations elsewhere in Victoria with similar broad mineralisation where those grades averaged around 0.7 g/t Au (examples being the Bailieston open pit and the Nagambie open pit). Furthermore these previous mines were established when the gold price was much lower than it is today. Drilling at Kuboid Hill was some 8km west of previous exploration undertaken at Davey Road which is associated with, or close to, the Dimocks Main Shale corridor ("DMS").

Kuboid Hill falls within another parallel mineralised system approximately 8km west of the DMS and shows early signs of the potential to generate a low-grade, bulk tonnage proposition. This is the first type of modern exploration applied within this part of Creswick. ECR's next steps are to dry-blow bulk sampling of anomalous and broad mineralisation zones as described above.

This follow-on step at Davey Road produced some enhancement of the results there.  These preliminary results from Kuboid Hill took some time to assemble given the extent of mineralisation zones but the Company anticipates the results of the final two drill holes and the bulk sampling will be completed more quickly.  A further announcement will be made in due course.