- Castle Minerals (CDT) applies for an exploration licence in Western Australia
- The Wilgee Springs licence covers an area of 120 square kilometres and is reportedly prospective for lithium bearing pegmatites
- The licence area lies within the same metamorphic belt and along strike of the tier-one Greenbushes lithium mine
- Shares are up 15.4 per cent at 1.5 cents each at 12:22 pm AEST
Castle Minerals (CDT) has applied for an exploration licence in Western Australia’s South-West region.
The Wilgee Springs licence covers an area of 120 square kilometres and is reportedly prospective for lithium bearing pegmatites.
Notably, the licence lies within the same metamorphic belt and along strike of the tier-one Greenbushes lithium mine, 25 kilometres to the south.
According to CDT, Greenbushes is the world’s largest, highest-grade and lowest cost, hard rock spodumene concentrate producing operation and supplies 21 per cent of global lithium from its mineral resource of 178.5-million-tonnes at two per cent lithium oxide.
The new application is set to boost Castle’s participation in the fast-evolving battery and power storage sector and joins the company’s Kambale Graphite Project in Ghana where recent test work on weathered material produced a benchmark 96.4 per cent total carbon fine flake graphite concentrate.
The company is set to use modern geochemical and geophysical exploration technologies to look through thick laterite cover, which has previously stunted exploration.
Castle’s managing director Stephen Stone said the application provided the company with a low-cost entry point into the same metamorphic belt that hosted the tier-one Greenbushes lithium mine.
“Thick laterite cover has previously hampered exploration but that is exactly what we now see as the opportunity given today’s advanced geochemical and geophysical exploration technologies that in effect allow us to ‘peer’ beneath this cover,” he said.
“This application, along with Castle’s existing Kambale graphite project, advances the company’s participation in the fast evolving battery metals exploration sector in which it will continue to search for complementary opportunities.”
CDT said an orientation site visit had confirmed good access for first-pass, low-impact exploration.
Shares were up 15.4 per cent at 1.5 cents each at 12:22 pm AEST.