Q3 2011 Production Report and IMS

21 July 2011

Lonmin Plc

Third Quarter 2011 Production Report

& Interim Management Statement

Lonmin Plc, the world's third largest Platinum producer, today announces its production results for the three and nine months to 30 June 2011and interim management statement (unaudited).

Overview

During the third quarter, momentum of the business was impacted by two fatalities in April and the illegal industrial stoppage in May at the Karee operations. We have since made good progress in restoring production and expect to be back to normal operating levels by August. Considerable progress has been made with the safety initiatives we embarked on. We continue to intensify our focus on these initiatives and our LTIFR has fallen during the quarter from 5.4 at the half year to 5.1 as at 30 June 2011.

Year to date, our underground tonnage mined and milled is up on the comparable prior year period and our metals in concentrate has also increased.

Third Quarter Production

Mining

Our underground operations at Marikana produced 2.4 million tonnes during the third quarter of the 2011 financial year, a decrease of 8.1% from the third quarter of the 2010 financial year. The decrease was across all the underground mining operations. The overall reduction at Karee of 7.2%, when compared to prior year quarter was due to the unprotected industrial action which resulted in a loss of 258,000 tonnes of production. Production at Westerns, Middelkraal and Easterns combined decreased by 8.5% against the prior year as challenging ground conditions and mechanical breakdowns at Saffy and Hossy persisted and the planned decline at Newman continued. The impact of Section 54 shut downs was 132,000 tonnes in lost production during the quarter, mainly at our K3 and E1 shafts where we experienced fatalities in April 2011. This compares to a loss in production during the same period last year of around 109,000 tonnes. Management induced safety stoppages, particularly following the fatalities in April resulted in 44,000 tonnes of lost production.

Production at our Merensky opencast operations increased by 53.1% from the prior year period as opencast production was ramping up at that time.

Overall, tonnes mined of 2.5 million for the quarter, reflected a decrease of 168,000 tonnes, equivalent to a 6.2% reduction against the prior year.

Concentrators, Smelting and Refining

Total tonnes milled in the quarter were flat year on year at 2.8 million with the contribution from opencast contributing an additional 50,000 tonnes offsetting the slightly reduced underground tonnes milled.

Underground milled head grade was down 0.13 grammes per tonne, or 2.7% to 4.48 grammes per tonne (5PGE+Au) when compared to 4.60 grammes per tonne in the prior year period. This reflects the continued increase in the proportion of Merensky ore in the underground ore mix and lower grade ore at our UG2 operations. The overall milled head grade was 4.37 grammes per tonne, a decline of 3.9% when compared to the prior year period as it includes the impact of increased contribution from the lower grade opencast ore.

Underground and overall concentrator recoveries were broadly flat when compared with the prior year period reflecting a high performing and stable operating environment at our concentrators. The opencast concentrator recoveries improved by 2.0 percentage points

Platinum in concentrate from the Marikana operations and overall total Platinum in concentrate was 158,490 and 164,212 ounces, respectively, a 3.0% and 3.2 % decrease over the prior year quarter.

Total refined production for the third quarter was up 81.4% at 166,832 Platinum ounces, when compared to the prior year period which was impacted by the down time of the Number One Furnace during the prior year quarter.

Sales and Pricing

Platinum sales of 160,499 ounces were 74.5% higher than the prior year quarter, as a result of the lower production in the prior year, resulting from the Number One Furnace outage.

The US Dollar price basket, at US$1,303, was 11.1% higher than the prior year quarter but 2.2 % lower than the second quarter. The corresponding Rand basket price was however 0.1% lower than the prior year and 5.2% weaker when compared to the second quarter.

Nine Month Production

Total tonnes mined during the first nine months of the 2011 financial year were 8.4 million tonnes, an increase of 0.5 million tonnes or 6.3% from the prior year period. This is firstly due to a significant increase in production at the Karee operations in the first two quarters, which resulted in an increase of 7.2% when compared to the prior year period. Secondly, Easterns increased its production by 98,000 tonnes when compared against the prior year period and the opencast operations contributed an additional 0.4 million tonnes. These increases were partly offset by the fall in production at Westerns as Newman continues to decline, together with mechanical breakdown and ground condition challenges at Middelkraal's Hossy and Saffy shafts, which have impacted ramp up production. Section 54 shut downs during the nine month period resulted in a loss of around 201,000 tonnes. This compares to around 258,000 tonnes for the same period last year.

Total tonnes milled during the nine months of the 2011 financial year increased by 10.9% to 8.8 million tonnes when compared to the same period in the prior year as a result of milling opencast stockpiles and an increase in mining production. The total milled head grade however, fell by 6.4% to 4.35 grammes per tonne (5PGE+Au) when compared to the prior year period. This is as a result of the fall in underground head grade and the increase of lower grade Merensky ore, some of which is from opencast mining. Overall concentrator recoveries improved in the nine month period to 85.2% from 84.6% in the prior year period, with marked improvements in the opencast recoveries. The concentrators produced a total of 519,075 saleable ounces of Platinum in concentrate in the nine months, representing a 5.6% year on year increase.

Total refined production in the nine months of the 2011 financial year was 483,665 Platinum ounces and 982,387 PGM ounces, an increase of 26.0% and 25.7% respectively when compared to the prior year period. The increase reflects the impact of the Number One Furnace incidents in the prior year period.

Final metal sales for the nine months were 478,804 ounces of Platinum and 973,695 ounces of PGMs, an increase of 24.7% and 23.9% respectively, year on year.

Outlook

Since the resumption of normal operations at Karee we have made steady progress giving us confidence that absent further safety stoppages and external strike actions impacting our operations, we will achieve our adjusted full year guidance of sales of around 720,000 Platinum ounces for the current financial year. As described in our Guidance Update on 10 June 2011, unit costs were negatively impacted by the Karee disruption. We are now able to clarify the impact of the resultant reduced production on our unit costs and are consequently increasing our guidance from an annual increase of around 8% to around an 11% increase in unit costs for the full year.

ENQUIRIES:

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Head of Investor Relations

Media:

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Rupert Pittman / Emma Crawshaw

Financial Dynamics +27 (0) 11 214 2402

Dani Cohen / Sue Vey