Castle follow-up of 10-year-old holes reveals more Ghanaian gold

Castle Minerals’ recent reverse circulation drilling program at the company’s Bundi prospect, within its Ghanaian Kpali gold project, has nailed several robust gold runs, including a best run of 18 metres at 1.22 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 89m.

The intercept includes 3m at 3.35g/t gold from 89m and 3m at 1.77g/t gold from 101m, with a separate 2m at 2.07g/t gold from 113m.

A second hole drilled into an adjacent section hammered its way through 7m assaying 3.26g/t gold from 114m, including 5m at 4.34g/t gold from 114m, which in turn includes a handy 2m at 9.46g/t gold from 117m.

Castle’s five-hole, 552m drilling program at Bundi, 4 kilometres north of its Kpali prospect, is the first undertaken in 10 years. The prospect was discovered via a campaign of scout geochemistry and two confirmatory reverse circulation drilling programs along 100m-spaced lines.

The three remaining holes in the latest program include one that intercepted 1m at 1.11g/t gold from 43m on the same section as the 5m at 4.43g/t intercept.

The other two holes, drilled on a section 100m north of that pair, delivered 1m assaying 2.63g/t gold from 41m and 2m at 1.4g/t gold from 67m, and 1m going 1.24g/t gold from 112m, respectively.

Castle says it is encouraged by the early drilling results in the central zone at Bundi, which confirm mineralisation continuity and point to an apparent thickening of the gold intercepts with increasing depth.

Results from the 10-year-old reverse circulation campaign at Bundi include a top three hits of 51.03g/t gold from 168m, 6m at 3.32g/t gold from 37m and 2m at 9.09g/t gold from 68m.

Another five intercepts in the earlier work produced grade x intercept length hits between 7.0gm.m and 15.78gm.m.

The Bundi prospect lies within a north-south regional structural trend which extends for about 4km south along the Wa-Lawra/Boromo greenstone belt trend towards the Kpali prospect.

The Bundi RC drilling program has bolstered the credentials of this prospect, just one of several within the broader Kpali gold project and has laid the foundations for follow-up RC drilling later in this quarter. It is still relatively early days at Kpali, a newly discovered West African gold district with a geological setting very similar to those of the region’s many deposits and mines.

Castle’s recent 23-hole reverse circulation drilling program at Kpali delivered a host of high-grade intercepts, which confirm the presence of two robust and consistently mineralised lodes over a 650m north-south strike and to 110m depth.

The program also produced a best grade of 20.66g/t gold over a 1m interval from 41m.

Kpali features a veritable swarm of enticing results from the program, grading up to 8.21g/t gold over a 3m intercept from 9m depth.

At Bundi, gold is hosted within persistent, steeply-dipping lodes, accompanied by strong sulphide development and networked quartz stringers.

Castle notes that the structurally controlled, orogenic, lode-style mineralisation at Kpali and Bundi is typical of many significant gold deposits in West Africa’s Birimian geological terrane, some of which extend many hundreds of metres deep.

The strong mineralisation continuity and geological settings at Kpali and Bundi point to strong potential for high-grade discoveries throughout the broader Kpali project.

Exploration to date across all of the prospects within the Kpali project - including the Kpali East, Wa South East and Wa South West prospects -indicates a strong possibility of unveiling a new West African gold camp with a potentially massive gold endowment in an area once held to be devoid of gold indications.

Castle’s gold-search capability has been given a solid boost by its recent zero-cost acquisition of a raw 2006 regional-scale, high-resolution aeromagnetic survey dataset from a previous explorer.

The new data includes the Kpali gold project and represents a vast improvement on Castle’s previous single aeromagnetic image.

The survey data comprises about 100,000km of flight lines, which at today’s prices would cost it about $2.3 million to acquire. The data is being reprocessed and will be interpreted by Castle’s consultants.

The new data will supplement the company’s recent target identification by the same consultants using other datasets, including VTEM, ground magnetics, geochemistry, rotary air blast and reverse circulation drilling, and could massively transform ongoing interpretative work.

Castle is planning to launch new auger drilling programs in early August to reconnoitre new targets, selected from interpretations of the combined data sets.

Additionally, the company’s encouraging reverse circulation drilling results from Kpali justify more comprehensive follow-up work to infill and extend currently defined gold mineralisation.

Accordingly, Castle has slated the launch of a follow-up campaign for the September quarter. Both the auger and reverse circulation drilling kick-off dates remain subject to rig availability and the end of the local wet season.

Given the highly encouraging results to date, and with Ghana’s ancient and prospective Birimian greenstones being one of the world’s new prime addresses for discovering gold, Castle is looking well-set to discovering the next big show with its Kpali and nearby Kandia gold projects.

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