Castle Minerals is expanding its reverse-circulation (RC) drilling program at its Kambale graphite play in Ghana, as it seeks to fast-track its project towards development.
The company says its latest drilling program will deliver an upgraded mineral resource estimate and could also identify new zones of graphite. Metallurgical testwork is progressing towards producing precursor battery anode material.
Castle’s haste in getting its project into production is largely based on the world’s widely-forecast looming graphite supply deficit and escalating graphite demand. Graphite’s irreplaceable role in electric vehicle batteries and stationary power storage units is clearly accelerating the company’s efforts.
An updated mineral resource estimate for the project is now in sight and it will underpin a scoping study to evaluate a long-life, open-cut mining operation to produce a bulk fine-flake graphite concentrate, in addition to a potentially high-value battery anode precursor material.
Castle decided to expand its RC drilling program following recent infill and extensional drilling and Loupe electromagnetic (EM) geophysics campaigns that identified new zones of interest.
The drilling program, which originally comprised 35 RC holes for 4100m of drilling, was primarily designed to increase the project’s mineral resource estimate of 15.6 million tonnes at a grade of 9 per cent total graphitic carbon containing 1.41 million tonnes of graphite. The program has now been expanded to 44 holes.
The infill and extensional RC drilling and Loupe electromagnetic (EM) geophysics campaigns have gone extremely well. We are looking forward to updating the present Mineral Resource Estimate of 15.6Mt at 9.0% TGC in addition to being able to identify additional zones of graphite on the broader 149km2 Project licence. Castle Minerals managing director Stephen Stone
Importantly, the company notes that its project has earned a high level of support from senior government officials and key community leaders.
Mr Stone recently met with several senior government officials to discuss strategies to fast-track the project towards development. He also met with leaders from the local communities that will be most affected by exploration and development and said they were all supportive of the company’s current and proposed exploration.
Upon completing the extended RC drilling program and reporting drilling results, Castle will look to increase its current mineral resources estimate. Management says an independent geologist is on standby and ready to update the resource.
Additionally, data from the recently-completed Loupe EM geophysics survey will be processed to identify any new zones of graphitic schist within the broader licence area.
Once the mineral resource estimate has been updated and the Perth-based phase of the metallurgical testwork is completed, Castle then plans to start a high-level scoping study.
That study will evaluate the merits of a long-life, open-cut mining operation aimed at producing a bulk fine-flake graphite concentrate and potentially a higher-value precursor material for use in battery anode manufacturing.
Meanwhile, the company says a second phase of metallurgical testwork on diamond core samples is progressing positively.
Last December, a 300kg sample from four diamond drill core holes from the deposit was sent to a Perth laboratory. Assessment of the sample has now progressed from the bench-scale batch testing phase to the production of a bulk fine-flake graphite concentrate and is expected to be completed late next month.
The commercial-grade bulk concentrate will then be sent to a specialist facility in Europe to assess whether it can be used to manufacture precursor and battery anode material.
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