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Highland Gold: Maiden Ore Resource at Lyubov

Contributed by Fox-Davies Capital

Highland Gold has announced a maiden ore resource at its Lyubov project in the Zabaikalsky region in Eastern Siberia. The JORC compliant mineral resource audit was conducted by the independent consultancy IMC Montan. The audit defined a total mineral resource of 0.48M oz with 98% in the measured and indicated categories.

These ore resources consist of a measured resource of 1,305Mt grading 1.5g/t and containing 62,758oz of gold. The total resource is completed by an Indicated Resource of 9.8Mt grading 1.31 g/t containing 413,330oz of gold and an Inferred Resource of 0.14Mt grading 1.86g/t containing 8,198oz of gold taking the total to 484.3K oz of contained gold. The news is not unexpected as it was announced at the half yearly results presentation that several updated JORC resource figures were due to be released in the second half of 2012.

At Lyubov, Highland Gold is targeting a near surface bulk-mineable gold resource for a potential open-pit mining operation. The property license includes the Evgraf prospect which has been the focus of the Company's previous exploration activities including more than 20,000m of core drilling. The Evgraf prospect is characterised by stockwork-type mineralisation where gold is associated with disseminated quartz-sulphide veinlets localised within a granitic stock and surrounding shales. Previous test work has indicated favourable metallurgy and gold recovery levels via conventional processing methods including heap leaching. The mineral resource estimate included results from block modelling up to approximately 250 metres from surface. This project is now entering the development stage and engineering studies in relation to conventional processing options, including heap leaching have been initiated.