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Castle supercharges hunt for battery graphite in Ghana

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Castle Managing Director, Stephen Stone, In-country Director and Project Manager, Paul Amoako-Atta and Senior Geologist, George Asamoah-Boadu, examine RC drilling chips.
Camera IconCastle Managing Director, Stephen Stone, In-country Director and Project Manager, Paul Amoako-Atta and Senior Geologist, George Asamoah-Boadu, examine RC drilling chips. Credit: File

Explorer and project incubator Castle Minerals has completed a 52-hole 5353m RC drilling campaign on its Kambale graphite deposit in Ghana, samples will be flown to Perth for laboratory assays and the results are expected next month. Diamond drilling is expected to resume at the project in coming weeks and aims to capture enough unweathered samples for a high-level market assessment.

The company is looking to unveil a JORC exploration target range at the conclusion of assay analysis.

Drilling has been guided by a high-tech geophysical survey that revealed highly conductive layers in the subsurface. The company saw the survey results as so encouraging that it added six more holes for about 600m of additional sampling. Drill hole chip samples were also collected for petrological examination allowing consideration to be given to the best methods of separating the battery grade graphite from associated minerals.

Graphite is an excellent conductor and in high demand for electric vehicle and other lithium-ion batteries.

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Castle Minerals has been on the Ghana property since 2012 however has recently charged up operations because of the increasing global demand for battery-grade graphite, one battery mineral not yet developed in WA. Castle is hopeful that its exploration will find additional deposits in the Kambale region to expand its graphite footprint.

Management says it works closely with local farmers in determining where and when they will conduct field operations in search of the highly valuable battery mineral. The current pause in drilling will allow local farmers to complete their seasonal harvest and keep heavy equipment out of the fields during the wet season.

The Kambale graphite deposit was first discovered by Russian geologists working in Ghana in the 1960s with some of the work not published until the early 1990s. Newmont Limited had a crack at the deposit before global demand for battery minerals raced ahead. Castle stepped in and when graphite prices firmed in 2012, getting its first significant drilling done. The Kambale deposit has since been defined over a 2km strike length and to a depth of 110m.

Tests on sub-optimal weathered surface samples still yielded fine flake graphite grades up to 96.4 per cent and recoveries of 88 per cent using basic conventional extraction methods.

Everything we read about the graphite market forecasts a major supply deficit if the expected growth in electric vehicle manufacture is realised and the world continues its decarbonisation quest.

Castle Managing Director, Stephen Stone

Ghana is one of the most stable and democratic countries in West Africa. The capital city Accra has a major export-import harbour in the Gulf of Guinea facing the Atlantic Ocean. Whilst the Kambale project is in the far north of the country, transport and energy infrastructure is very well developed in Ghana and Castle is developing several transport and export options in anticipation of future production.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au

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