Ex-Rio Tinto Geologist joins Empire Metals

Empire Metals Limited / LON: EEE / Sector: Natural Resources

01 March 2023

Empire Metals Limited

("Empire" or "the Company")

Appointment of Exploration Manager

Ex-Rio Tinto Geologist joins Empire Metals Exploration Team

Empire Metals Limited (LON:EEE), the AIM-quoted resource exploration and development company, is pleased to announce the appointment of Andrew Faragher as the Company's Exploration Manager, with immediate effect

Mr Faragher joins a technical leadership team led by Shaun Bunn, the Managing Director, and includes a senior technical advisory group comprising Empire's Non-Executive Chairman, Dr. Neil O'Brien, and Mr Ed Baltis, the Company's Exploration Consultant. As Exploration Manager, Mr. Faragher will be responsible for exploration strategy and targeting, project evaluation, and supervising the exploration fieldwork and providing technical guidance to a team of geologists and field assistants.

Mr Faragher is an experienced exploration geologist with over 25 years' experience working across multiple commodities including copper/gold, base metals, uranium, iron ore, bauxite and diamonds. He has a strong track record of discoveries and a deep understanding of exploration.

Amongst other senior positions, Mr Faragher spent seven years working for Rio Tinto, where he held a number of roles including Exploration Manager - Canada and Chief Geologist -  Iron Ore and Bauxite. Highlights of his career with Rio Tinto include leading a team which discovered in excess of 5Bt of iron ore in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, along with building and developing successful exploration teams in both Australia and Canada.

Mr Faragher has a long history of copper exploration in Australia and Canada exploring for Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) in Queensland, South Australia and Northern Territory.  He was also part of the team that identified over 150Mt of Cu at the Mt Roseby IOCG Project north of Cloncurry.  He spent several years exploring for Mt Isa style sediment hosted deposits within the Mt Isa Inlier, northern Queensland, porphyry deposits in British Columbia and more recently providing technical direction on massive sulphide hosted Cu deposits close to Whitehorse in the Yukon, Canada.

More recently  he consulted for  DevEx Resources (ASX:DEV), an Australian multi-commodity explorer identifying a high-grade zone at the Nabarlek South uranium deposit in the Northern Territory of Australia, and generating successful exploration targets at their adjacent U40 project.

Shaun Bunn, Managing Director, said: "I am delighted to announce the appointment of Mr Faragher, who brings with him a wealth of experience and is a great addition to our growing  exploration team.  Investing in the right talent on the ground is key as we  look to further develop our existing portfolio of exploration projects and  advance the Company's flagship copper project at Pitfield, located near the town of Three Springs in Western Australia.

"Mr Faragher's appointment  bolsters our exploration team and provides the Company, along with our senior technical advisory group, the expertise required to successfully develop and execute our exploration plans, having established drill-ready targets for copper mineralisation at Pitfield as well as discovering a kaolin-rich zone at the Eclipse-Gindalbie Project, located just north-east of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia."

Empire's Exploration Team

The appointment of Andrew Faragher to the key role of Exploration Manager is a major milestone in the development of a highly skilled and experienced exploration team at Empire. Mr. Faragher's experience and skills compliment those of the existing technical team, which includes Ed Baltis, as Exploration Consultant, and Louisa Stokes as Exploration Geologist.

Ed Baltis has an extensive knowledge on the geology within Western Australia, and in particular the Archaean Yilgarn Craton, and its mineral potential with expertise in orogenic gold systems, as well as notable operational experience having managed and led exploration campaigns for a diverse range of commodities throughout Australasia, Africa and the Americas.

Amongst other positions he was previously Regional Exploration Manager for Australasia and subsequently Vice President Project Generation for Gold Fields Limited, where he was integral to the successful acquisition of Barrick Gold assets in Australia in 2013 and provided oversight of the exploration programmes that led to discovery of >3Moz Invincible deposit at St Ives. In recent years Ed has been providing consulting services in geology and target generation to a range of companies focussed in Australasia and Africa and was responsible for the discovery of the +1Moz Mandilla gold deposit in Western Australia in 2019.

Louisa Stokes is a PhD Candidate (Applied Geology) at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. She graduated from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College London with a MScs Geology (1st Class with Honours) in 2010 before embarking on a career as an Exploration Geologist working in places such as Armenia, Liberia and Mali for gold explorers and producers.

Amongst other responsibilities and achievements, Louisa was involved in the discovery and development of the 3.56Moz Dugbe Gold Project in southwest Liberia for Hummingbird Resources plc.

In addition to being the Company's Non-Executive Chairman, Dr. O'Brien acts as a senior technical advisor to the Company.  He is a consulting economic geologist and retired mining executive with a PhD in Geological Sciences from Queen's University, Canada, and nearly four decades of industry service with expertise in base metal exploration, including sediment-hosted copper deposits. Dr. O'Brien has international experience on six continents in all stages of mineral exploration and development of economic mineral resource projects.

Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure

Certain information contained in this announcement would have been deemed inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014, as incorporated into UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, until the release of this announcement.

**ENDS**

For further information please visit www.empiremetals.co.uk  or contact:

About Empire Metals Limited

Empire Metals is an AIM-listed (LON: EEE) exploration and resource development company with a project portfolio comprising gold interests in Australia and Austria.

The Company's strategy is to develop a pipeline of projects at different stages in the development curve. Its initial focus has been on the high-grade Eclipse and Gindalbie Gold Projects in Western Australia.  The Company expanded its exploration licence area in April 2022 from 9.5km² to 1,728km² with the acquisition of the Pitfield Copper-Gold Project and the Walton Copper-Gold Project in Western Australia, and the Stavely Copper-Gold Project in the Stavely Arc region of Victoria. 

Empire also holds a portfolio of three precious metals projects located in a historically high-grade gold production region comprising the Rotgulden, Schonberg and Walchen prospects in central-southern Austria.

The Board continues to evaluate opportunities through which to realise the value of its wider portfolio and reviews further assets which meet the Company's investment criteria.