Underground exploration to resume at Hellyer Gold Mine

NQ Minerals

London, United Kingdom – August 25 2020 – NQ Minerals Plc (AQSE:NQMI, OTCQB:NQMLF, US ADR OTCQB:NQMIY) (“NQ” or the “Company”) announces that it plans to break a 10-year hiatus in exploration work at its highly prospective Hellyer Project, located in the Mt Read Volcanic Belt; a geological terrain in NW Tasmanian renowned for large scale and high-grade polymetallic (copper-lead-zinc-silver-gold) deposits.

NQ Minerals Executive Chairman David Lenigas today announced that underground exploration at the Hellyer Gold Mine in NW Tasmania will commence again for the first time in ten years.

Mr Lenigas says the company is currently producing lead and zinc concentrates (with significant gold and silver credits) by reprocessing tailings stockpiles from the previous mining operations and is now in the position where underground exploration can start again.

“We bought the exclusive rights to the underground resources at Hellyer from Bass Metals Ltd in January this year. ” Mr Lenigas said.

He added historical exploration stopped in early 2012 but with the use of modern geophysical exploration techniques significant ‘open’ targets’ have been identified.

“We have commenced a systematic review of the new targets, focused initially close to known deposits and existing mine infrastructure.

“There is now significant potential to define new and extensive high-grade mineralisation at Hellyer, one of the world’s great polymetallic high-grade mines.

“Hellyer is located in one of the mostly highly mineralised geological terrains in the world and we have a golden opportunity to continue Bass’s work from 2012 to extend the existing underground resource and allow the mine to operate for a very long time.

“The tailings reprocessing Phase 1, now running at over 1.2 million tonnes per year, has another 8 years to run with its current lead/zinc strategy and will generate significant cash flow for the Company, but it’s a finite resource. Stage 2 of the current operations will focus on recovering the significant gold and silver inventory in the tailings, but metallurgical test work continues with respect to this next phase of tailings reprocessing. To move Hellyer back into underground mining is a logical and natural progression, especially considering we have the Hellyer plant fully operational.” Mr Lenigas said.

The Hellyer deposit was a large scale, very high-grade lead-zinc mine. Past production under Aberfoyle (1986 – 20000) totalled 16.5 million tonnes at 13.9% zinc, 7.2% lead, 0.4% copper, 167 g/t silver and 2.5 g/t gold and under Bass Metals (2010-2012) totalled 0.5 million tonnes at 7.8% zinc, 4.2% lead, 0.3% copper, 101 g/t silver and 1.7 g/t gold from the Fossey Mine. There has been no exploration work undertaken on the Hellyer Mine Lease since underground mining operations ceased in mid-2012.

Mineralisation on the Hellyer Mine Lease comprises massive base metal sulphide lenses within the core of a broadly folded volcanic-sedimentary sequence which plunges to the north-northeast. As the mineralisation generally does not outcrop, geophysics has played a vital part in mineral discoveries in the Hellyer region and down-hole electromagnetics (DHEM) is a core technique. NQ has now completed a first pass review of historical DHEM data for 8 surveyed drill holes in the priority-1 area. Remodelling work of the DHEM undertaken by Southern Geoscience, with input from former Hellyer geologists, has highlighted the significant enhancement in modelling software, and has identified four high priority targets/zones (Target 1 to 3B), which warrant follow-up exploration work, as presented in Figure 1, and represent significant potential

/Public Release.