Mesa Minerals Limited (ASX:MAS) First Ant Hill Ore Shipment Sails From Port Hedland

Perth, Oct 26, 2009 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Mesa Minerals Limited (ASX:MAS) is pleased to announce that the vessel carrying its inaugural shipment of manganese lump ore sailed from Port Hedland on Saturday 24th October bound for Southern China. The 'Clipper Express', which is carrying the 24,000t cargo is scheduled to arrive at Qinzhou Port in Guangxi Province on 2nd November. Mesa Minerals, the sales agent, and Auvex Limited each have a 50% 'several but undivided' interest in the cargo.

This first cargo represents another very important, step forward in the Company's efforts to attain a regular and long term income stream from the sale of metallurgical grade manganese ore. The achievement of this goal is seen as a complement to, and a funding source for, the Company's parallel efforts to establish a second regular and long term income stream from the secondary processing of the lower grade ore fractions mined at Ant Hill.

The lessons learned from the many problems encountered and overcome in achieving this first shipment will stand the Company in good stead for the future. Likewise, the lessons to be learned from its performance as a manganese alloy smelter feed will enable the Company to determine more precisely the optimum grades for ore products to be produced at Ant Hill.

Mesa Minerals would like to take this opportunity to express its sincere appreciation for the efforts of the many parties who, from the 'mine gate' to 'ship's rail', assisted us to overcome the numerous hurdles we faced along the way. Without their support we simply could not have achieved a successful outcome. The various authorities, communities, companies and individuals that assisted us are too numerous to list here. Suffice to say that we intend to repay their support and live up to the confidence they have shown in us.

This shipment was the first from trial production and the Company anticipates larger scale mining on the Ant Hill and Sunday Hill manganese deposits that were mined previously to satisfy demand for manganese for Australian steel production in the post war era.

Mesa Minerals and its production joint venture partner are considering making a second shipment early in the New Year. The joint venture parties expect to receive approval to resume mining and are in the process of refining a mine plans, reviewing beneficiation options, planning road improvements with government authorities and seeking quotes from the potential contractors and suppliers.

Contact

Alan Scott Managing Director Tel: +61-8-9321-6033 www.mesaminerals.com.au