Mercator Minerals Ltd. provided an update on on-going recent activities at its wholly-owned Mineral Park Mine, including production results for the three months ended March 31, 2013. Most importantly, recent changes to the grinding circuit have resulted in sustained throughput increases of approximately 20% to average 54,700 tons per day. At Mineral Park, average mill throughput rates have recently increased due to the optimization of the internal configuration of the two SAG mills and the changing of the pebble handling processes by feeding a higher proportion of the recycled pebbles directly into the four ball mills. As a result of these optimizations, since March 21, 2013, average throughput rates, as measured by tons per hour, when compared to harder ore blends (as measured by ore grind index) have increased significantly. Over this period, mill throughput rates, on a sustained basis, at an average ore grind index of 11.3, have averaged 54,700 tpd, which is 9% above the stated design capacity of 50,000 tpd.

During the first quarter of 2013, recoveries for copper and molybdenum were 82.5% and 82.3%, respectively, compared to 72.6% and 70.9% in the first quarter of 2012, and design parameters of 80% and 75% for copper and molybdenum, respectively. Production for the three month period ended March 31, 2013, totalled 20.4 million pounds of copper equivalent, comprised of 8.3 million pounds of copper in concentrates, 0.8 million pounds of cathode copper, 2.4 million pounds of molybdenum and 152,100 ounces of silver.

The company expects second quarter 2013 production to improve over the first quarter. Mineral Park is on track to produce between 93.0 million to 102.0 million pounds of copper equivalent production in 2013, which includes 41.5 million to 46.5 million pounds of copper (38.5 million to 42.5 million pounds copper in concentrates and 3.0 to 4.0 million pounds of copper cathode copper), 11.0 to 12.0 million pounds of molybdenum and 0.6 million ounces of silver.