Best results of 4m @ 23.4g/t Au, 5m @ 9.6g/t Au and 13m @ 7.5g/t Au

Gold producer Focus Minerals (ASX: FML) is pleased to advise that drilling to establish a sustainable production base for upcoming open pit mining at its Coolgardie Gold Operations in Western Australia has delivered a series of outstanding high-grade gold intersections from the Big Blow deposit, at the Tindals Mining Centre.

The ongoing forty five hole surface drilling program at Big Blow, which is testing strike extensions to the north and south, and depth extensions 40m below the current planned pit, has delivered excellent intersections from the first thirty holes which is very encouraging given their density and proximity to an existing planned pit.

Best results include (also refer Figure 1): 4m @ 23.4g/t Au from 76m, 5m @ 9.6g/t Au from 92m, 13m @ 7.5g/t Au from 84m, and 6m @ 6.4g/t Au from 77m.

Focus Minerals CEO, Campbell Baird, said the results from Big Blow pointed to the potential for future stage expansion of the existing planned open pit.

“The Tindals open pits will form the third leg of our planned production profile in 2011. We presently have an open pit reserve at Tindals of 390,000 @ 2.1g/t for 26,400 ozs, and with results from a further fifteen holes still pending along a 250m strike length we will work towards upgrading our resource model to define further stages for the Big Blow open pit.”

Big Blow is one of several potential open pit projects located in the Tindals Mining Centre, from where the bulk of ore is presently sourced from the underground operations.

The Company plans to commence open pit production at the Tindals Mining Centre in the June Quarter once all approvals have been received. This will supplement the underground ore currently sourced from Tindals as well as the planned new underground mining centre at The Mount, located to the south-east of Focus’ Three Mile Hill treatment facility.

Download full announcement – High Grade Gold Intercepts at Big Blow