Austral Gold Limited announced that Juan Andres Morel, Min.Eng, MBA, has joined the Company as Chief Operating Officer. Rodrigo Ramirez, Min.Eng, has also been appointed as the Vice President of Technical Services. The strengthening of the operational team follows the significant growth in the company over the last year. Juan Andres Morel will assume this newly created role following the rapid expansion of the company from one operation in Chile to two operations and a new mine in Argentina in less than a year. He is a Senior Mining Executive with more than 25 years of experience in operations, business development, engineering and management of mining companies and projects. Mr. Morel was most recently Manager of Operations at Antofagasta PLC's Los Pelambres open pit mine in Chile. Prior to that he was Executive Director for Antofagasta International, leading business development and exploration, CEO of an Antofagasta PLC JV (Twin Metals- Minnesota) and General Manager of Antofagasta PLC's El Tesoro mine in Chile. He has a Mining Engineering degree from Universidad de Chile and Executive-MBA from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Rodrigo Ramirez will assume the new role of VP Technical Services as the company looks to maximize efficiencies across three operations and seek out growth opportunities. He has been involved with the company since it was founded to recommission the Guanaco mine. He has led mining and engineering activities since then as well as all reviews and analysis of the company's growth activities. He recently led design and construction of the company's new agitation leach plant at Guanaco, and prior to joining Austral, had senior operational, planning and execution roles at Antofagasta PLC, and at Meridian Gold's (acquired by Yamana Gold) world class El Peñon mine. He has a Mining Engineering Degree from the University of Chile.