Overarching AmmLeach® Patent Granted in Australia

31 May 2013

Alexander Mining plc

('Alexander' or the 'Company')

Overarching AmmLeach® Patent Granted in Australia for Method for Ammoniacal Leaching

Alexander is pleased to report that it has received notification that its MetaLeach Limited ("MetaLeach") subsidiary has been granted a patent for a Method for Ammoniacal Leaching, patent number 2008278269. This patent forms part of MetaLeach's family of core AmmLeach® technologies and has a standard term of twenty years from the effective date of 11 July 2008 (being the date of original filing).

Martin Rosser, Chief Executive Officer, said: "The grant of our Australian patent for a Method for Ammoniacal Leaching, which is the overarching AmmLeach® patent in our intellectual property portfolio, follows soon after the same patent was granted in the USA (and somewhat earlier in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa). This is an important patent for Metaleach, given its status as encompassing the key technology underpinning all applications of the AmmLeach® technology."

Specifically, the granted Australian patent encompasses methods for leaching one or more target metals from an ore, the methods comprising the steps of: curing the ore to be leached through the application of an aqueous solution of a curing agent, producing a cured ore; leaching the cured ore at atmospheric pressure through the application of an ammonium carbonate solution containing free ammonia, producing a pregnant leach solution; and passing the pregnant leach solution to a means for metals recovery.

ENDS

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