28th Aug 2007 07:02
Highland Gold Mining Limited28 August 2007 Highland Gold acquires exploration and production rights for the Iska ore field, Khabarovsk region Press-release August 27, 2007 - Highland Gold Mining Limited ("Highland Gold", or the"Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has acquired a license forexploration and mining rights for the Iska ore field in the Khabarovsk Region.The acquisition was made in an open auction on August 24 in Khabarovsk for a bidprice of 1.87 million roubles (US$ 72.300). The acquisition of the Iska property underlines the Company's strategy ofgrowing its asset portfolio in the vicinity of existing operations by addingquality exploration properties with a good potential for future gold production. The Iska license encompasses an area of 920 km sq. which is situatedapproximately 80 km to the south from Highland's MNV operating mine and 20 km tothe south of our Belaya Gora exploration property. Iska is well connected tolocal infrastructure and future exploration work on the property will thusbenefit from synergies with the current operations nearby. License terms for the Iska property include exploration and development for atotal license period of 20 years. The license payment will be made within 30days once the registration procedure has been completed. The Iska ore field is the geological continuation of the gold-bearing BelayaGora volcano-tectonic structure where an advanced drilling program continues todeliver positive results. The Iska property is relatively underexplored for goldbut features striking similarities with Belaya Gora in terms of volcanic hostrocks, geological structure, mineral assemblages and hydrothermal alteration,the latter marked by wide areas of intense clay alteration with zones of quartzand quartz-alunite mineralization. Several gold occurrences (Zimovie, Fadeeva, Brusnichnoe, Igrek) are reportedthroughout the property with grades in the range of 0.4 g/t - 34 g/t, andhigh-grade geochemical gold anomalies and gold placers in vicinity demonstratethe good potential of the property. A stockwork-type low-grade mineralizationsystem has been partially explored at Iska and features similarities to that atBelaya Gora. More significantly, the Iska property hosts a large alunite deposit which isunexplored for gold. Such alunite mineralization together with the style ofclay-alteration at Iska is analogous to the geological setting of unique golddeposits such as Yanacocha, Pascua-Lama, Pierina hosted within the Andeanvolcanic belt of South America. Following an evaluation of data from previous explorers, a multi-disciplinaryexploration program is now being designed which will include geophysical andgeochemical surveys, and trenching and drilling programs for testing knownmineralized zones. Commenting on today's announcement Henry Horne, Managing Director, said: "Thisis an important addition to our exploration portfolio and signals our desire toexploit properties that we believe to be of potential value. The positiveresults we are finding at Belaya Gora and the proximity of the license to ourMNV site demonstrate that we are looking in the right area and the geologicalsimilarities of Iska are very promising.." - ENDS -For further informationplease contact: Henry Horne, Managing Director Dmitry Yakushkin, Director of Communications Moscow: + 7 (495) 777 31 55 Dominic Palmer-Tomkinson, Head of Investor Relations London: +44 (0) 207851 64 00 Or, WMC Communications, Alex Glover on +44 20 7930 9030 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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