ALO.L Regulatory News (ALO)

Alecto Minerals plc / EPIC: ALO / Market: AIM / Sector: Exploration & Development

4 December 2012

Alecto Minerals plc ('Alecto' or 'the Company')

Positive Exploration Update

Alecto Minerals plc, an AIM listed multi-commodity exploration and development company with projects in Ethiopia and Mauritania, is pleased to provide an exploration update regarding work conducted during Q3/Q4 2012, at the 945.5 sq km Wayu Boda Gold Project ('Wayu Boda' or 'the Project') located in the mineral rich central-southern Adola greenstone belt in southern Ethiopia. 

The Company has conducted extensive mapping and rock chip sampling focussed on the artisanal workings in the northern section of the licence. These occur in three locations, with a distance of 2km between the northernmost to the southernmost working. The workings target quartz vein swarms and larger individual quartz veins hosted in metavolcanics and the occasional pits target the host rock itself. 

Rock chip sampling of artisanal workings have recovered grades of up to 47.4g/t of gold ('Au') while gold grades up to 31.7g/t Au have been returned from sampling of artisanal waste dumps. Additionally, Alecto has also acquired Aster and high resolution Ikonos satellite imagery over the Wayu Boda Licence Area. A team of five geologists is expected to remain on site until the Christmas break. On-going work includes geophysics, soil sampling and ground magnetics and following completion of this over the coming weeks, the full results will be published in Q1 2013. 

A trenching campaign has also been conducted, with results including 1.3m @ 4.9g/t from trench WBCT001. As a whole, trenching of the target area has been hampered by the presence of more extensive artisanal workings than initially estimated. This has led to trenches intersecting mined out veins and vein swarms, thought to contain high grade gold mineralisation.

Measured pit depths are in excess of 10m though artisanal miners report deeper workings and extensive tunnelling along strike. At their widest point, artisanal workings occur over a 50m width perpendicular to the strike of mineralisation. The mineralisation is open to both the north and south, with the newest artisanal pits at these two extremes. To the west and east of the target area extensive alluvial workings exist. The mined areas may connect to each other underneath shallow tertiary volcanic cover.

Alecto Managing Director Damian Conboy said, "The advanced artisanal workings at Wayu Boda underpin the solid prospectivity of the licence area and we are pleased to announce the receipt of gold grades up to 47.4 g/t from the workings, as well as 31.7 g/t from waste dumps. These results demonstrate the high grade potential of the region which is host to Midroc's 160,000oz per annum Lega Dembi Gold Mine and NMiC's Dawa Gold Project. Over the coming weeks, we look forward to completing geophysical, soil sampling and ground magnetic work, enabling us to provide the full findings of this work in the near term and advance it on to the next stage of exploration."

**ENDS**

For further information, please visit www.alectominerals.com or contact:

Notes:

Alecto Minerals plc is an AIM listed exploration company focussed on Africa with a diverse portfolio of exploration assets in Mauritania and Ethiopia.

In Mauritania, it has three gold and base metal development licences totalling 1,902 sq km in the highly prospective Mauritanide mobile belt and two uranium licences totalling 1,592 sq km. It also holds the 1,953 sq km gold exploration licence in the highly prospective Aysid-Metekel region of north western Ethiopia and the 945 sq km Wayu Boda gold licence in the mineral-rich Adola greenstone belt in southern Ethiopia. 

The Company is committed to conducting exploratory work across its portfolio, designed to strengthen its knowledge of the assets and delineate targets for further exploration. In tandem, the Board continues to evaluate a number of synergistic assets to build shareholder value.