Castle Minerals has defined five priority lithium targets through soil sampling at its Woodcutters project, which sits midway between Western Australia’s Bald Hill lithium-tantalum mine and the Buldania lithium deposit, some 75km north-east of Norseman.
The anomalies within the State’s lithium corridor are in a favourable geological setting, 25km south-west and along strike from Bald Hill. Castle is now rallying to the site to map and sample outcropping pegmatites.
Previous work at Woodcutters identified multi-element signatures consistent with possible hard-rock lithium mineralisation associated with lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatites. The Geological Survey of WA also previously mapped pegmatites in the area that have not been followed up for examination.
We are very pleased to have defined five priority lithium-in-soil anomalies in our maiden program at the Woodcutters Project in an area which lies on the same structural trend as the Alita Resources Ltd owned Bald Hill lithium-tantalum mine, 25km to the north-west. Castle Minerals managing director Steve Stone
Castle has 482 square kilometres of tenure at Woodcutters, which is almost entirely covered with soil. The company says its soil sampling enables it to focus on specific lithium zones within what it calls the most favourable geological terrane and containing the Bald Hill lithium mine, which hosts 26.5 million tonnes at 1.0 per cent lithium oxide and the Buldania lithium deposit with 14.9 million tonnes at 1.0 per cent lithium oxide.
Management considers the zone a favourable geological setting for lithium mineralisation as it is mostly Eastern Goldfields greenstone close to the contact with Archean granites, which are the most likely source of any lithium mineralisation if it is present.
Castle’s recent soil sampling comprised 937 samples on a 200m-by-200m grid and assays revealed 21 lithium anomalies of varying priority. Lithium oxide results varied up to 85 parts per million, with the 90-percentile value of 53ppm defining the anomalies that were prioritised by a range of criteria including pathfinder element anomalies in beryllium, caesium, niobium and tantalum.
One anomaly was deemed as priority one and four anomalies were rated as priority two. They varied from 300m to 500m long.
Castle says the use of soil sampling to locate hard-rock lithium deposits is yet to be assessed as a tool because the mobility of lithium-in-soil profiles is not well understood and multi-element associations apply mainly to hard-rock data.
Management’s next step is field verification of the five priority anomalies through mapping and sampling. Broad historic anomalies outside the interpreted lithium corridor will also be assessed. Air-core and RC drilling will be planned, subject to locating pegmatites confirmed to have lithium in assayed rock-chip samples.
Castle’s battery metal interests also include its flagship Kambale and Great Southern graphite projects, in addition to the Wilgee Springs and Woomba Well lithium operations. If Woodcutters can demonstrate a pedigree similar to Bald Hill and Buldania, then Castle could well be onto something significant.
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