MAJOR NEW ORE POSITION DISCOVEREDAT TRIDENTAvoca Resources...

MAJOR NEW ORE POSITION DISCOVERED
AT TRIDENT
Avoca Resources Limited (Avoca) is pleased to announce the discovery of a major new ore zone that further underwrites its confidence that Higginsville will grow into a 10 year plus gold mine with average life of mine cash costs approaching or bettering the global sector average.
The new ore zone, named Apollo, will add to the existing 800,000 ounce high grade Trident gold deposit and expand the existing overall 1.1 million ounce resource at Higginsville. Apollo has been intersected in six oriented diamond drill holes over a strike length of 350m. Importantly it remains open to the north. A key attraction to the Apollo Zone is that it lies only 20m north of the planned Trident Decline at a vertical depth of 430m, which will likely provide an excellent platform for future underground infill drilling and development of Apollo.
The six drill intersections that define Apollo, including the new result of 10m @ 4.2 g/t gold from 565m in HIGD113 are:
• 24.9m @ 4.0 g/t gold in HIGD081* including 9.4m @ 8.5 g/t gold
• 14m @ 4.7 g/t gold in HIGD090*
• 10m @ 4.2 g/t gold in HIGD113
• 12.6 @ 3.1 g/t gold in HIGD087*
• 11m @ 2.1 g/t gold in HIGD112*
• Visible gold in recently completed intersection in HIGD114 (assays awaited)

Geology of Apollo Zone

The close proximity of the Apollo Zone to the established Trident lodes of Western Zone (395Koz), Athena (284Koz) and Eastern Zone (118Koz) is shown in Figure 1. Apollo is interpreted to be closely associated with the northern continuation of the Western Zone structure, and to that end shares a very similar appearance in drill core to the Western Zone mineralisation, being quartz-arsenopyrite-pyrrhotite veining within a strongly altered gabbro.


As evidenced within the Western Zone and the Athena Lodes, the Apollo Zone appears to have a strongly developed flat plunge to the mineralisation (Figure 1). From a mining perspective, flat plunging deposits typically provide highly favourable ounces and tonnes per vertical metrecharacteristics, which can enable expeditious development and stoping.

Ongoing Exploration at Apollo and Impact on Trident Growth Options

Avoca views the 100% success rate of each of the six widely spaced diamond holes into the Apollo surface as very significant, confirming the continuity with depth of the highly mineralised Trident ore system. Drill testing the continuity of the Apollo Zone will continue to the north of the previous intersections.

Surface drilling will continue to define the broad extents of the Apollo mineralisation so that an Inferred Resource can be established. Following the estimation of the Apollo Inferred Resource, underground drilling from a dedicated underground drill drive will be employed to convert Apollo to an Indicated Resource which would become the subject of mining reserve studies. The underground drill drive development will commence after the completion of the Trident Decline,
scheduled for 2010.
Avoca is a high quality mid-sized Australian gold company focussed on developing Higginsville to achieve ‘world class’ costs approaching or bettering the global industry average and a ten year plus mine life (at targeted production of around 160-190koz pa). Several key options exist to grow the inaugural 581,000 ounce Trident Reserve:
1. Ongoing drilling of Apollo.
2. Existing 142,000 ounce Inferred Resource adjacent to the planned Trident Decline – Underground drilling from dedicated drill sites will infill the Inferred Resources in order to generate Indicated Resources from which additional reserves can be estimated.s