Castle finishes drilling campaign as it chases high-grade Ghana gold

Castle Minerals has finished a 12-hole, 1505-metre reverse circulation (RC) drilling campaign within its Wa project in Ghana, which it fast-tracked at the end of last year to follow up a string of compelling high-grade gold intercepts.

The latest campaign at its Kpali and Kandia gold prospects is part of its broader 2686-square-kilometre Wa gold project, in Ghana’s emerging Upper West region, which that has seen a plethora of high-grade, multi-million-ounce discoveries in recent years.

The latest drilling campaign was designed to extend high-grade mineralised zones at both prospects, as part of the company’s aspiration to delineate an initial combined 1-million-ounce gold resource across a group of projects in the Upper West region.

Castle expects to report the results from the latest run of the drill bit in early February, having now finished eight holes totalling 923m at Kpali and four holes totalling 582m at Kandia.

The two standalone prospects occur in the highly prospective Birimian geological zone that hosts many of West Africa and Ghana’s multi-million-ounce gold mines and which have delivered 15 discoveries of more than two million ounces each since 2012, the company says.

ASX-listed Cardinal Resources made an impressive 138.6 million tonnes at 1.13 grams per tonne (g/t) gold for a contained 5.1 million ounces at its Namdini gold deposit before finding itself a takeover target in 2020.

Nearby, Azumah Resources has this year earmarked for development 2.8 million ounces at its Black Volta gold project.

Kandia lies on the same Bole-Bolgatanga Birimian greenstone belt as Namdini, while Black Volta’s Julie deposit is immediately along strike from the Kandia mineralised trend. The latest drilling at Kandia is designed to confirm the continuity of the mineralisation in the prospect’s 4000.

Castle says location is also a key driver for exploring the Kpali gold project, as it lies in the middle of two converging major greenstone belts and three regional-scale structures that are known hosts of gold mineralisation.

A previous nine-hole RC drilling program completed in September at Kpali intercepted 3m at 5.2g/t gold from 125m, including 1m running at 10g/t. Other encouraging intercepts were 4m going 3.66g/t gold from 26m and 11m averaging 1.86g/t from 143m.

With gold retaining all the glimmer of its recent stellar performance, it seems Castle will be keenly anticipating the latest drilling results, in the hope they will take it a few steps closer to achieving its own multi-million-ounce West African discovery.

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