Management Appointments and Options Issuance

Chesterfield Resources Plc / EPIC: CHF / Market: LSE / Sector: Mining

5 January 2021

Management appointments and options issuance

Chesterfield Resources is pleased to announce a number of management appointments as it develops its team for 2021.

Neil O'Brien has been appointed as Director of Exploration, in a leadership role for the company's exploration programmes. Dr O'Brien holds a PhD in Geological Sciences from Queen's University in Canada, and has over 30 years industry experience including as Senior Vice President, Exploration and New Business Development at Lundin Mining Corporation until his early retirement in 2018.    

George Clegg and Ryan Fells have been appointed as Exploration Geologists. George and Ryan had previously been working for Chesterfield in Cyprus on a contracting basis. They are now joining as full-time employees of the company.

Said Executive Chairman Martin French "In making these appointments we have added strength and continuity to our team. Neil O'Brien is an acknowledged expert on VMS (Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide) deposits and the Tethyan Belt, and provides a tremendous depth of experience to our programme. He was previously acting as technical consultant to the company, and will now be stepping-up to take a leadership position within the team. 

George Clegg and Ryan Fells graduated in the same year from the Camborne School of Mines and worked on site with us through the season last year. These appointments establish continuity to the project and to the company. It is important that the team is properly incentivised with share options, and so are focussed on the same objective of creating share value growth for the benefit of all our shareholders.

I am pleased to report that we are entering 2021 in a strong position, with a management and operations team falling into place, fully funded for our enlarged exploration campaign for the 2021 season, and backed by a FTSE 100 strategic partner. There will be more news to follow soon."

On the recommendation of the Remuneration Committee, the Board has agreed to issue management incentive options over a total of 1,400,000 ordinary shares of 0.1p each in the capital of the company with an exercise price of 14p. These options will vest immediately and will expire five years from the date of issue. The options have been issued to the new management appointees as per the table below.

The company now has a total of 11,105,000 incentive options on issue, equivalent to 9.4% of its fully diluted capital.

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About Chesterfield Resources

Chesterfield Resources is a copper-gold exploration company active in Cyprus, where it holds the largest mineral exploration licence area of any operator on the island. Polymetal International, the FTSE 100 mining group, recently announced it had taken a 23% strategic investment in Chesterfield via a placing of new shares.

Cyprus is regarded as a good quality exploration location. It is a member of the EU, and its legal system is based on English common law. There has been minimal exploration activity on the island in the last 46 years since the invasion by Turkey in 1974 put a halt to what had been a very active mining industry.

Since that time, exploration technology and geological knowledge has improved significantly. The company is exploring for VMS (Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide) deposits, which typically occur in stacks and clusters. Historically only those deposits which were visible from surface have been mined. It is believed that many more deposits remain undiscovered buried near surface, and the company is using modern techniques to locate them.

While copper is the main exploration target, it is noteworthy that gold was not historically exploited in Cyprus as its price was pegged to just $35 per ounce when the mining industry was active in the 1960s and 1970s (less than 50 times today's price). Gold has been encountered in several locations in the exploration target area and is an important part of the exploration objective.

The exploration team is led by three very senior geologists: Neil O'Brien, formally Head of Exploration, Lundin Mining, Dave Cliff, previously Head of Exploration Europe, Rio Tinto, and Mike Parker, previously a senior geologist with First Quantum Mining

The current focus of exploration is in the Troodos West group of licences belonging to the company, with around 30 defined targets in an area measuring 10km by 10km. The objective is to discover several VMS deposits in close proximity to each other to create a mining project with a centralised processing unit. The company is now in planning for its fully-funded 2021 campaign of geophysics and diamond drilling.

Chesterfield Resources is committed to world-class environmental standards in all of its operations to mine copper, which is essential to developing clean technology projects worldwide. The company hopes to develop industry and opportunities for the benefit of the Republic of Cyprus.

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 until the release of this announcement.

**ENDS**

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