ROCHE BAY BUSINESS PLAN ANNOUNCED AT TORONTO PDAC

PRESS RELEASE

Roche Bay plc
London 11th March 2001

ROCHE BAY BUSINESS PLAN ANNOUNCED AT TORONTO PDAC

Roche Bay plc is launching a preliminary business plan for the development of the Roche Bay magnetite asset at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Convention in Toronto, March 10th-13th.

The property includes over 460 million tonnes of drilled assumed magnetite reserves and 4 billion tonnes of assumed reserves. A substantial portion of the deposit is above ground, and Roche Bay's planned strategy uses a gravel pit model to extract the ore, with a substantial transfer of processing activity to Europe.

Roche Bay plc plans to develop a "gravel pit" iron ore mine which blasts ore, transports it to a mill, crushes it to minus 4 mesh, transports it to the dock site and loads it onto customers' ships. This facility will be able to ship up to 7 million tonnes per year of raw ore to the European market with an initial investment of only $91 million USD. The operation will have estimated gross margins of approximately 45%.

"Our plan involves low capital expenditure for a reasonably high profit margin" explained Roche Bay President Benjamin Cox. "Treating this asset as a gravel pit operation allows the ore to be extracted at a good profit without involving the company in expensive infrastructure considerations."

Copies of the preliminary business plan will be available from the company at the PDAC Convention in Toronto, at Roche Bay's booth, 1119.

For further information please contact:

Chris Bourne
Director of Public Relations
email: pr@rochebay.com
Tel: +44 020 8571 5216
Fax: +44 020 8455 8701
www.rochebay.com
Forward Looking statement at: http://www.rochebay.com/fwdlook.shtml