Highland Gold buys rights for new mine in Mnogovershinnoye

AIM-listed mining company Highland Gold Mining has acquired a license for exploration and mining rights for the Western Flank, a property located adjacent to the company's existing Mnogovershinnoye mine operations in Russia. The acquisition resulted from an open auction held on December 6th in the regional capital of Khabarovsk for a bid price of 8,690m roubles (approximately $280,322). The new license area includes the Chaynoye zone which the company believes has good potential to deliver new resources at Mnogovershinnoye. The Chaynoye prospect is approximately 1,000 metres in length and varies from 40 to 150 metres in width. It is situated near the intersection of two major faults immediately northwest and adjacent to the current Mnogovershinnoye license area. Chaynoye was partially explored in the past and has a historical reported prognostic resource of 3.5 tonnes (112,500 oz) of gold. Gold mineralisation is hosted within zones of quartz and quartz-carbonate veins and veinlets as well as within areas of quartz-sericite altered and silicified volcanic rock. Explored vein widths range between 0.3 to 3.0 metres for up to 115 metres along strike and reported historic gold grades as high as 207 g/t.An aggressive trenching and drilling programme is being designed for 2013 in order to upgrade the resource potential of Chaynoye for future exploitation via the Company's operations at Mnogovershinnoye. Highland Gold Mining was incorporated in Jersey in May 2002 for the purpose of acquiring, consolidating and developing a portfolio of gold mining projects in the Russian Federation and Central Asia. The company has a market capitalisation of £273.17mMF