Release: Herald completes placement, plans major exploration push at Dairi project

Following is a release from Herald Resources Limited release to ASX on 8 March 2004

PLACEMENT

Herald is pleased to announce that it has made a placement of 2.5m shares at $0.80, raising $2m. The shares were issued to Macquarie Bank and were done without a fee.

Macquarie Bank have been strong supporters of the company by previously:

1. providing loan facilities of $6m for the re-opening and development of the Coolgardie Gold Project;

2. providing $0.3m seed capital in offshoot company Corona Gold Ltd to fund grass roots exploration on the Meluak project, Indonesia (plus may subscribe for additional issues totalling $11.4m);

3. providing a $3m convertible funding facility completion of the Bankable Feasibility Study on the Dairi Project; and

4. subscribing for this current equity raising to fund exploration and working capital.

DAIRI ZINC/LEAD PROJECT

Whilst infill drilling on the high-grade Anjing Hitam deposit has been virtually continuos since late last year, Herald had ceased greenfields drilling at Dairi while carrying out the Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS). The BFS, which is based solely on Anjing Hitam, is expected to be completed in June/July of this year.

The above placement will provide Herald with funds to simultaneously recommence exploration on a number of other highly promising exploration targets at the Dairi Project, including:

- Sinar Pagi, a high grade lead/silver prospect, approximately 20km north of Anjing Hitam. At Sinar Pagi, channel assay samples from up to 5m widths from a so far identified 200m of vein strike have assayed up to 60% lead and 40% ozs per tonne of silver;

- Lae Jahe, where inferred resources of 8mt of 12% combined zinc/lead have already been delineated;

- Bonkaras, Bululaga and the oxide Basuki Lode, where mineralisation assaying up to 35% Zn is exposed along about 800m of strike over about a 100m vertical extent, but with uncertain overall width.

The company's geologists will plan an exploration programme to test several of these targets in the short term, while also considering the most probable target to extend mine life following the extraction of the Anjing Hitam reserves (6.3mt @ 16% Zinc, 10% Lead). Lae Jahe, only several hundred of metres north of the proposed treatment facilities, would appear to be the most logical starting place.

Herald is delighted to have Macquarie Bank as a shareholder of the Company, part of an increasing institutional presence on our register as the Dairi Project progresses towards production. Hopefully, this trend also reflects a reduction in some of the perceived sovereign risk concerns that investors have towards mining companies in Indonesia, and which Herald, having operated there since 1996, does not share. (*)