ECR Minerals PLC
09 October 2026
9 October 2026
ECR MINERALS PLC
(“ECR Minerals”, “ECR” or the “Company”)
Coarse Gold Discovery at Brothers Creek
12.3g Nugget Highlights Gold Fertility and Emerging Alluvial Opportunity
ECR Minerals plc (LON: ECR), the gold exploration and development company focused on Australia, is pleased to announce encouraging surface prospecting results from the Brothers Mining Licence area. The Brothers Mining Licence is located in the south-east of the Maddens Flat Group of Mines in North Queensland.ECR has a 50% interest in the Maddens Flat Group of Mines.
Prospecting using metal detectors in a 2,100m north-south zone incorporating the Brothers Mining Licence area has recovered multiple gold nuggets from 26 sites ranging from 0.1g to 12.3g in weight, particularly in the Brothers Creek, which drains directly into the alluvial mining area of the Brothers Mining Licence (see Fig.1). Geographic locations were established with GPS technology.
Fig.1: Prospecting results from the Brothers Mining Licence and Brothers Creek Area.
The prospectingresults provide an encouraging early indication of the alluvial potential surrounding the Brothers Mining Licence area and at the Mining Licence itself and supports the Company’s plans to undertake more systematic trial processing in the area, focusing within the granted Mining Licence area. As previously announced, equipment acquired as part of the Raglan transaction is also being redeployed to the Maddens Flat area, providing ECR with the plant and machinery required to advance this next phase of testing.
The prospecting of the area is planned to continue, particularly westwards into a creek the Company has named Elliot Creek, (in memory of the Lone Wolf prospector, Sam Elliot, who worked this part of the West Normanby Goldfields), which drains an extensive area of old prospecting workings visible in the Company’s 2026 drone LiDAR surveys, called the Elliot Anomalous Area (Fig.1). This is considered to be one of the most isolated and underexplored areas of the Maddens Exploration Licence.
Highlights
- Multiple gold nuggets, some coarse, recovered at 26 sites during initial surface prospecting around the Brothers Project.
- Largest nugget recovered weighs 12.3g, providing a strong indication of coarse gold occurring within surface alluvial systems (Fig.2).
- Presence of nuggets indicates elevated gold fertility and prospectivity of the area, both north and south of the Brothers Mining Licence.
- At the Brothers Mining Licence, field observations indicate that the alluvial material consists predominantly of loose sand and gravel, which may be comparatively straightforward to process.
- Equipment from the Raglan project is being redeployed to the Maddens Flat area to support trial alluvial processing and systematic bulk sampling.
- Trial work will seek to establish gold recovery characteristics and provide a better understanding of the scale and potential economics of the alluvial potential of the Brothers Project.
Fig.2: Coarse gold nuggets recovered during initial surface prospecting around the Brothers Project, including a 12.3g nugget from Brothers Creek 1,300m south of current Mining Licence.
The Brothers Project
The Brothers Mining Lease forms part of the wider Maddens Flat Group of Mines project area and contains both historic underground workings and prospective surface alluvial ground.
The immediate focus is on evaluating the shallow alluvial opportunity. Importantly, the material observed during recent fieldwork consists largely of loose sand and gravel, with relatively limited clay content. The board of directors of ECR (the “Board” or the “Directors”) believes that this may provide favourable characteristics for gravity-based trial processing, although systematic bulk testing will be required before any conclusions can be drawn regarding recoverable grades or commercial potential.
The Company therefore intends to progressively test the alluvial gravels across selected areas of the Brothers Mining Lease in order to better understand gold distribution, recovery characteristics and the potential scale of the opportunity.
Equipment Mobilisation and Trial Processing
ECR is currently redeploying equipment acquired through the Raglan transaction to the Maddens Flat area.
This equipment includes heavy earth-moving machinery and processing equipment which can be used to support trial mining and bulk sampling at the Brothers Project.
This equipment gives the Company the ability to undertake practical testing of the alluvial material without needing to establish an entirely new operating fleet.
The first phase of work is expected to focus on systematic bulk sampling, and trial wash runs across areas within the Brothers Mining Licence alluvial zone.
This work will establish representative recovery data and determine the economic parameters for potential gold recovery operations.
Broader Brothers Opportunity
In addition to the alluvial opportunity, the Brothers Project contains historic underground workings which provide longer-term hard-rock exploration and development potential, as described in more detail in the Company’s announcement of 20 April 2026 in relation to the acquisition of Paleogold Limited (now renamed ECR Minerals (Paleogold) Limited).
Recent work across the wider Maddens Flat area has also significantly improved the Company’s understanding of the historic underground workings, including surveying of Brothers and other mines within the field.
While the immediate focus at the Brothers Project is on assessing the surface alluvial opportunity, the historic underground mine provides additional longer-term production development opportunities which will be examined in the broader Maddens project portfolio.
Next Steps for Brothers
The Company intends to:
- Complete mobilisation of equipment to the Maddens Flat area;
- Undertake systematic bulk sampling and trial processing across selected alluvial targets;
- Assess gold recovery characteristics and distribution;
- Continue mapping and prospecting along Brothers Creek and Elliot Creek;
- Map and assess the Elliot Anomalous Zone, and;
- Evaluate the relationship between the surface alluvial gold and the wider Brothers mineralised system.
Any future dewatering or rehabilitation of the historic underground workings will be considered separately as part of the longer-term evaluation of the Brothers Project.
ECR Technical Director Mike Parker commented: “We consider these prospecting results to be extremely encouraging and in this steeply weathering terrain we are reasonably confident that the hard-rock source of the gold is localised upstream and in the side creeks of the main Brothers Creek – so it’s a fertile area for gold localisation in veins as we have seen in many other localities at Maddens Flat Group of Mines. Thus, as well as evaluating additional alluvial and colluvial potential draining into our alluvial zone at the Brothers Project, we are gaining valuable exploration vectors in this area which has had no modern exploration. We are also very excited to see the amount of old timer prospecting our LiDAR survey has indicated as it acts as a significant guide to focused exploration in this remote part of the exploration licence”.
ECR Chairman Nick Tulloch commented: “The prospecting has confirmed the alluvial potential of the south-east of our exploration area, and it is encouraging to see that the most prospective creek drains directly into our alluvial zone at the Brothers Project.
“What makes the opportunity particularly interesting is the nature of the ground. The material we have seen is predominantly loose sand and gravel, and we now have access to equipment that will allow us to test this opportunity on a more systematic basis.
“We are deliberately taking a measured approach. The next step is to move from prospecting to representative bulk sampling and trial processing so that we can better understand recoveries, grade distribution and the potential scale of the alluvial system.
“Brothers sits within the wider Maddens Flat project area, where we already have infrastructure, an experienced operating team and a number of historic gold workings. The initial alluvial results add another potentially attractive opportunity to that broader project.
“We look forward to updating shareholders as this next phase of testing progresses.In the meantime, we expect to have further updates on production at the nearby Maddens Underground Mine in the coming weeks.”
Review of Announcement by Qualified Person
This announcement has been reviewed by Michael Parker, Non-Executive Director of ECR Minerals Plc. Michael Parker has a BSc. in Mining Geology and is a professional geologist and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (FAusIMM). He is a qualified person as that term is defined by the AIM Note for Mining, Oil and Gas Companies.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
ECR Minerals plc |
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8080 8176 |
Nick Tulloch, Chairman Andrew Scott, Director |
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Allenby Capital Limited |
Tel: +44 (0) 3328 5656 |
Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker Alex Brearley / Nick Naylor / Vivek Bhardwaj (Corporate Finance) Kelly Gardiner (Sales and Corporate Broking) |
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CREST Corporate Broking Joint Broker Jerry Keen
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Tel: +44 (0) 20 3973 3678 |
Axis Capital Markets Limited |
Tel: +44 (0) 203 026 0320 |
Joint Broker |
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Lewis Jones |
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SI Capital Ltd |
Tel: +44 (0) 1483 413500 |
Joint Broker |
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Nick Emerson |
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St Bride’s Partners / Spire |
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7236 1177 |
Public & Investor Relations |
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Alan Green |
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ABOUT ECR MINERALS PLC
ECR Minerals is a mineral exploration and development company operating through four wholly owned Australian subsidiaries ECR Minerals (Australia) Pty Ltd ("ECR Australia"), ECR Minerals (Queensland) Pty Ltd ("ECR Queensland"), ECR Minerals (Raglan) Pty Ltd ("ECR Raglan")and ECR Minerals (Paleogold) Ltd ("ECR Paleogold").
ECR Paleogold has a 50% interest in the Maddens hard rock mining project in Northern Queensland where work is underway for production this year. It alsohas a 20% interest in the Salt Bushshallow open cutmining project in South Australia where preparations are underway for production which is expected to commence around mid-2027. ECR Paleogold also owns 80% of the Tuckanarra exploration project in Western Australia.
ECR Australia owns the Bailieston and Creswick gold projects in central Victoria, Australia as well as the Tambo gold project in eastern Victoria.
ECR Raglanhas a mining lease at the Raglan alluvial gold project in central Queensland, Australia and ECR Queensland has two approved exploration permits over the nearby Blue Mountain alluvial gold project. ECR is currently working to bring the Blue Mountain alluvial gold project into production. ECR Queensland also has three approved exploration permits covering 946 km2over a relatively unexplored area in Lolworth Range in northern Queensland. Furthermore, it has also submitted a licence application at Kondaparinga which is approximately 120km2in area and located within theHodgkinson Gold Province, 80km NW of Mareeba, North Queensland.
Following the sale of the Avoca, Moormbool and Timor gold projects in Victoria, Australia to Fosterville South Exploration Ltd (TSX-V: FSX) and the subsequent spin-out of the Avoca and Timor projects to Leviathan Gold Ltd (TSX-V: LVX), ECR Australia has the right to receive up to A$2 million in payments subject to future resource estimation or production from these projects.
ECR Australia also has approximately A$77 million of unutilised tax losses incurred during previous operations.
Glossary
g: |
Grammes (Metric) |
GPS: |
Global positioning system |
km: |
Kilometres (Metric) |
km²: |
Kilometre squared (Metric) |
LiDAR: |
Light Detection and Ranging |
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