Tectonic Metals Inc. announced the initiation of a baseline metallurgical testwork program on the Company's Flat Gold Project ("Flat"), an intrusion-hosted, bulk tonnage gold system located in southwestern Alaska, 40km north of the Donlin Gold Project ("Donlin"), owned equally by Barrick Gold Corporation (GOLD, ABX) and NOVAGOLD Resources Inc. (NG). Metallurgical samples were selected by Tectonic from historically drilled diamond core samples with the objective of investigating the potential for free-milling gold mineralization at Flat, and more specifically, within the Chicken Mountain Zone ("CMZ"). The metallurgical testwork is being undertaken by Base Metallurgical Laboratories, Kamloops, British Colombia, under the supervision of Tectonic's consulting Metallurgist, Mr. Jeet Basi, Mining and Mineral Process Engineer, who has over 15 years of technical leadership experience in global public mining companies, including Newmont, Goldcorp and Teck Resources.

Base Metallurgical Laboratories ("Base Met Labs") is a fully integrated mineral processing laboratory located in Kamloops, BC. The facility incorporates metallurgical, mineralogy and analytical capabilities. This ensures rapid turnaround times on testwork programs. Base Met Labs is backed by experienced metallurgists with regards to flotation and cyanidation process flowsheet development and interpretation of mineralogical analyses.

Tectonic's Metallurgical Program focuses on Flat's Chicken Mountain Zone comprised of intrusion-related gold mineralization hosted within a zoned monzonitic intrusion, which forms part of the more extensive Late Cretaceous Flat volcano-plutonic complex intruding Cretaceous-aged Kuskokwim sediments. Forty historic (1997-1998), mineralized ½ core diamond drill intervals were collected by Tectonic, representing four target composites of various intrusive phases, alteration assemblages and oxidation profiles from the Upper Flat and Holy Cross targets at the Chicken Mountain Zone. The objective of this metallurgical testing program is to conduct baseline level investigations to determine the amenability of intrusion-hosted gold mineralization at Flat to conventional cyanide extraction, flotation recovery, and gravity separation processing options.

The scope of this study consists of feed characterization of each individual sample prior to compositing, composite head sample characterization, and metallurgical test work on each composite comprising grind calibration, cyanide kinetic leaching, rougher flotation, gravity testing, and geochemical characterization of test work products. For each composite, process options will initially be tested at 75 µm and 150 µm target grind sizes to investigate the effect of grind size on gold recovery. While extensive placer gold production has been recorded from drainages sourced on Chicken Mountain, historical metallurgical testing on intrusion-hosted gold mineralization is limited to a single bottle roll test in 1991 conducted on diamond drill core from a monzonite dyke east of the main Chicken Mountain mineralized body.

The bottle roll test work data on this sample indicates that intrusion-hosted gold mineralization at Flat is amenable to direct cyanidation and showed increasing extractions with decreasing particle size for the sample tested. The sample tested in 1991 yielded a cumulative gold extraction of 82% for the 200 mesh particle size and 54.0% for the 6 mesh material. Unfortunately, neither the type nor style of the mineralization nor the representativeness of the material submitted is reported and the application of this historical met sample to the mineralization at Chicken Mountain is somewhat limiting.

Tectonic's disclosure of a technical or scientific nature in this press release has been reviewed, verified and approved by Peter Kleespies, M.Sc., P.Geo., Tectonic's Vice President Exploration, who serves as a Qualified Person under the definition of National Instrument 43-101.