Central and South East Asian gold production and exploration company, Avocet Mining has received positive trenching results from a recent exploration campaign over the Mangkaluku prospect in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The South Sulawesi project is a grass roots exploration initiative designed to identify drilling targets within a known belt of orogenic gold mineralisation. This is an area with poor rock outcrops therefore requiring extensive trenching to investigate geochemical anomalies.

Avocet has identified the potential for at least two orogenic quartz lode systems similar to the mineralisation at the company's Penjom gold mine in Malaysia. These are Mangkaluku and Tarra-Siguntu.

The main target, Mangkaluku, has been the focus of exploration this year. A grid soil sampling program has identified an 800 x 1000 metre gold anomaly (> 50 ppb gold in soil) encompassing three main east-north-east-striking fault zones. Trenching across the main zone has identified two main sheeted vein sets, which strike east-north-east and north-north-east, hosted by a phyllic-altered metamorphosed monzodiorite intrusion.

The significant trench intersections from the first part of the program include 33.2 metres @ 8.20 grams/tonne gold (including 12.1 metres @ 17.3 grams/tonne gold), 18 metres @ 6.81 grams/tonne gold, 10.4 metres @ 5.90 grams/tonne gold (including 2.4 metres @ 16.3 grams/tonne gold), 2.5 metres @ 18.4 grams/tonne gold, 14.5 metres @ 2.91 grams/tonne gold and 7.6 metres @ 5.47 grams/tonne gold.

Trenching will continue within the main zone, as well as in the parallel fault zones, in order to investigate the full scale of the vein system and its internal fabric in preparation for drilling next year.

While the trenching program has proven the existence of high-grade gold mineralisation over significant widths, drilling is required to prove up the continuity of mineralisation.

Exploration at Mangkaluku will take priority over additional work at Tarra-Siguntu.

Avocet currently controls the project through a temporary exploration permit, which is a pre-cursor to the old Contract of Work tenement system.

The Indonesian Government is currently drafting a new Mining Law that will form the framework for exploration and mining tenements in the future.

In the meantime, Avocet intends to use the Kuasa Pertambangan (KP) tenement structure to maintain control over the South Sulawesi project.