Castle Minerals Limited (ASX: CDT) has entered into agreements to purchase a 100% interest in two quality gold projects, Wanganui and Polelle, located in the prolific Meekatharra gold mining district of Western Australia.
Managing Director, Stephen Stone, said the Wanganui project presents an immediate opportunity to extend shallow mined mineralisation down-plunge and to delineate resources for trucking and sale to one or more regional processing facilities.
He added that Polelle hosts a mainly obscured and minimally explored greenstone belt comprising a combination of prospective lithological units and major structural features, in particular one linked to the Albury Heath deposit immediately adjacent to the east of licence.
The company has received commitments for a share placement to raise $488,000 to help fund the acquisition.
“We are very pleased to have secured these two strategically located and prospective gold projects in the Meekatharra region,” Mr Stone said.
“The acquisition increases Castle’s exposure to exploration for structurally controlled orogenic gold deposits which can extend to considerable depths, as is the case elsewhere in Western Australia and in West Africa where Castle holds extensive and similarly prospective tenure.
“It also provides broader jurisdictional balance and, given the current operating environment, exposure to more serviceable exploration in Western Australia and hence ultimately improved news flow for shareholders.”
Mr Stone said that the Wanganui project (E51/1703, 18.4km2), 33km south-west of the active Meekatharra mining centre and 15km south-west of the operating Bluebird gold mine, offers an opportunity is to quickly test for down-plunge and along strike extensions to the existing Main Lode North and South deposits. In 2002, when the gold price was much lower than present, these were partially open-pit mined to recover shallow oxide ore to a depth of approximately 30m.
The Main Lode mineralisation, which can be intermittently traced for at least 1km, is one of at least four sub-parallel, northeast striking and structurally analogous mineralised zones. The others are the East Lode, the Far East Lode and the Queenslander reef line where anomalous mineralisation has been confirmed over 1km, 400m and 200m respectively.
The plan at all zones is to quickly finesse and drill targets with the similar aim of delineating relatively shallow supergene and then deeper primary mineralisation suitable for open pit and underground extraction.
At the Polelle project (E51/1843, 144.5 sq. km), 25km south of Meekatharra and 7km southeast of the operating Bluebird Mine, the initial focus will be on exploring for repetitions onto the licence of the Albury Heath gold deposit mineralisation, 1km to the east.
Polelle is12km west of the Gabanintha Mine, 11km east of the Nannine group of gold mines and is easily accessed via sealed and good quality unsealed highways.
Four broad target areas have been outlined for initial work. This will comprise reprocessing of aeromagnetic data, historical data compilation and review, regolith mapping, geological mapping, sampling of outcrop where available and reconnaissance geochemical sampling. This will be undertaken and completed in coming months so that initial drill testing of any defined anomalies can commence soon after.
