Buchans Minerals Corporation announces that it has initiated plans to complete a 5 hole drill program on the Plymouth manganese deposit, one of three manganese deposits owned by the company near the town of Woodstock, New Brunswick. The core samples will be used for hydrometallurgical testing to confirm the 1987 metallurgical program that successfully leached manganese from the Plymouth deposit and to also optimize the leaching and purification processes.

Buchans Minerals has engaged Thibault & Associates Inc of Fredericton, New Brunswick to conduct the bench scale hydrometallurgical tests to confirm and optimize the process for leaching manganese from the Plymouth deposit. In addition the tests will explore the optimal process for purifying the leach solution to a state whereby it may provide the basis for producing high purity manganese products such as electrolytic manganese metal, manganese dioxide, manganese sulphate and manganese carbonate.

Mr Warren MacLeod president & CEO of Buchans Minerals said that "Historical work on the Woodstock manganese property suggests it has the potential to become one of the largest undeveloped manganese deposits in North America and we believe it could become a major asset of our company. It is our intent to expedite its development and the program announced today is the first step along this road. Following the completion of the metallurgical program, our target will be the completion of a National Instrument 43-101 resource estimate and a preliminary economic assessment of the project by the middle of 2012."

Manganese is the fourth most traded metal in the world with approximately 30 billion pounds of production every year, the bulk of which is manganese concentrates for the steel industry. Overall manganese demand has been growing at 8% per year with particularly strong growth in the high purity manganese market, as evidenced by the EMM market that has been growing at 26% per year for the past 5 years and now represents annual production of 2.6 billion pounds.

With 97% of the world's EMM production emanating from China and export tariffs of 20%, there is a clear need for production outside China. There are currently no manganese mines in North America and to the best of the Company's knowledge, only American Manganese is actively developing a leachable manganese deposit for producing high purity manganese products in North America. The future of the manganese market is further enhanced by the use of manganese in high performance batteries for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, as is evidenced by the recent investment by General Motors in Envia Systems, the company that has recently developed high capacity manganese rich cathode material for advanced batteries.