2009 - A Year Of Great Progress For Murchison Metals Limited (ASX:MMX)

Perth, Sep 21, 2009 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Murchison Metals Limited (ASX:MMX)(PINK:MUMTF) is pleased to present its financial statements for the 2009 financial year.

2009 was a year of great progress on the development of Murchison's assets, including its 50% interest in each of Crosslands Resources Ltd (Crosslands), owner of the Jack Hills iron ore project, and Oakajee Port and Rail (OPR), developer of new port and rail infrastructure to serve the mid-west mining industry.

Murchison Executive Chairman Paul Kopejtka said the events of 2009 confirmed the Company's pivotal position in the development of the mid-west as one of Australia most prospective new mining provinces.

"Murchison has a 50% interest in both the infrastructure that will serve all miners in the region and in the Jack Hills mine, which is shaping up as potentially one of the biggest mining projects in the region," said Mr Kopejtka.

"This positions Murchison for a very bright future, with opportunities to drive value for shareholders operationally and corporately."

The key development of the 2009 financial year was the selection of OPR as the WA Government's preferred developer of a deepwater port at Oakajee and the associated rail infrastructure in the state's midwest, to serve the burgeoning iron ore industry.

This was followed in March 2009 by the signing of a State Development Agreement (SDA) between the WA Government, OPR, Murchison and Mitsubishi Development Pty Ltd, which holds the remaining 50% interest in Crosslands and OPR.

The SDA provides exclusive rights to OPR to develop the deepwater port at Oakajee and the northern rail link to bring iron ore from Jack Hills and other mines in the mid-west to the Oakajee port for export to customers overseas.

The Oakajee project received a major boost during FY09 when the State and Federal governments each committed A$339 million in funding to the project, signaling to all stakeholders high level government support for the project as a means of unlocking the value of mineral deposits in the mid-west.

Crosslands also reported major developments during the 2009 financial year, notably the announcement of a Mineral Resource of 96mt of DSO at 58.7% Fe and 991mt of beneficiation feed (BFO) at 34.1% Fe.

A further A$23 million exploration program - one of the biggest running in Australia this year - was launched to expand and upgrade the established resource.

Subsequent to year end, Crosslands announced that based on results from the current exploration program Crosslands is targeting an additional 400m to 1,000 million tonnes of BFO with a component of DSO.

If fully realised, these additional tonnages would potentially lift the project size to 2.1 billion tonnes.

"These announcements underline the significance and value of the Jack Hills project and give us great confidence in the potential for Jack Hills to become a large scale, multi-decade project with high quality product," said Mr Kopejtka.

In FY09, Crosslands mined some 1.65 million tonnes of ore at its Jack Hills stage 1 project, delivering further early cashflow to the project partners as the stage 2 development plan is progressed. Before corporate overheads and its share of OPR expenses, Crosslands generated earnings before interest, tax and depreciation in excess of A$13.5 million.

Along with revenue from the sale of the Company's holding in Midwest Corporation, this revenue helped Murchison deliver a positive net profit result of A$700,000 for the full financial year.

"All of these developments with OPR and Crosslands demonstrate the significant intrinsic value of Murchison, a fact acknowledged by investors such as POSCO and Chinese group Sinosteel, both of which increased their interests in the Company during the year (to 12.1% and 6.1% respectively)," said Mr Kopejtka.

"We now have great momentum with our mining and infrastructure projects and look forward to another strong year and to delivering additional value for all of our shareholders in 2010."

For the complete Murchison Metals ASX Announcement, please click the link below:

http://www.abnnewswire.net/media/en/docs/61467-ASX-MMX-460738.pdf

Contact

Paul Kopejtka Executive Chairman Murchison Metals Ltd Tel: +61-8-9492-2600