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A gold exploration project set up in the prolific Western Australian Goldfields covering ten different tenements.
Drilling rigs are currently on-site and fired up with an 8,500-metre RC drill programme to be conducted during December and January.
Lying atop the well-understood geological greenstone belt and nearby existing downstream gold processing infrastructure.
While gold prices are at record highs, and small miners Down Under are starting to see the first green shoots of a slowly recovering mining environment.
Add in an existing JORC-compliant Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) to be enhanced by drilling in a program that was recently expanded to include a third high-priority gold target.
If this sounds like a promising conflation of factors for a microcap explorer, look no further than Redcastle Resources (ASX:RC1).
Who is Redcastle Resources?
Let’s run through the basics.
Redcastle is headed by Director Ron Miller – 45 years of corporate-level resources sector experience around the world – Non-Exec Chair Raymond Shaw, Non-Exec Directors Jeremy King, a corporate lawyer, and Sean Ke, a hard rock geo that recently joined the board.
The microcap company has all the hallmarks of a junior explorer overlooked by a distracted market: Low liquidity and a very attractive entry price.
It’s been a breakout year for the company in 2024 – while share price performance could be lacking compared to its highs around mid-year, development works at its flagship gold project have come to a head.
That sees the company head into 2025 with no shortage of informed exploration activities to undertake on-site and sets next year up as a real breakout moment.
The company’s flagship project is its Redcastle Gold Project (RGP), which comprises ten different tenements in the WA Goldfields region overlying a portion of the Eastern Yilgarn-located Laverton-Leonora greenstone belt.
Within the RGP there are three targets of interest in the current drilling program: Queen Alexandra (QA), Redcastle Reef (RR), and most recently, Morgan’s Castle East (MCE).
From two targets to three
Redcastle is gearing up to ink – eventually – a 1Moz resource base from its existing portfolio.
This, management sees as a real possibility – especially given their moniker for the Leonora-Laverton region, a “million-ounce neighbourhood.” That nickname is easy enough to figure out.
Saturn’s 1.8Moz Apollo Hill project sits relatively nearby (as far as the vast expanse of WA’s outback goes,) as well as AngloGold Ashanti’s 10Moz Sunrise Dam project.
And while nearology doesn’t mean much until deposits are proven to be shared; clearly, the region is called “the Goldfields” for a reason.
Key to that 1Moz target will be the three foremost RGP prospects of interest to management.
Here’s a run-down on each one.
Queen, Reef, Morgan’s Castle
At Queen Alexandra, Redcastle already boasts a 10.6Koz MRE, as well as a conceptual exploration target for as much as 380Koz of gold (though the latter target is ultimately not to be relied on by investors).
As for Redcastle Reef, the company sees an upper exploration target of 40Koz and to date, no JORC-compliant MRE is in place.
Originally, the drill program we’ve seen kick off in December was supposed to cover four components:
- Extension drilling at Queen Alexandra;
- Infill drilling at the same target,
- Deep drilling at more than 700m at Redcastle Reef, and,
- Extensional and infill drilling at Redcastle Reef.
But now there’s a new contender since those plans were drawn up in August: The third target, Morgan’s Castle East.
MCE landed on the company’s radar by way of extant historical data and drillers will be targeting areas believed to contain possible down-dip extensions of gold that have been proven underground at that target in the past.
Drill rigs are to start first at Queen Alexandra, progress to Reef, and then finish up at MEC, but the sequence can be adjusted based on results.
Initial assays are expected back in Q1 of CY2025; the company recently raised $3.7M to put the program together.
Significance of Goldfields acreage
Key to understanding the Redcastle value proposition is understanding the geological significance of the region’s geology.
So, buckle in, we’re about to talk about rocks. But it’s more exciting than you’d think.
According to Geoscience Australia, Redcastle is in the best spot to be within its neighbourhood to tap greenstone belt geology, notorious for being so old it’s simply had more geological time than other types of rock to form the conditions needed to trap mineralised gold.
Greenstone rocks are among the most ancient on earth, and, where Redcastle is in the Laverton-Leonora region is where some of the largest concentrations of greenstone geology are located in The Goldfields.
In other words: Location, location, location.
The area is also lousy with shear zones that break up the underlying greenstone formations into smaller subsects, and we needn’t get too deeply into that, only to clarify the region where Redcastle is exploring is firmly well understood.
It’s called Goldfields for a reason
The Goldfields is probably best known for the Kalgoorlie ‘Super Pit’ mine which runs more than half a kilometre deep and joints the Great Wall of China in being one of those monumental structures visible, in the right conditions, to the naked eye from space.
But the Super Pit is just the Grandfather mine everybody remembers. The region, perhaps unsurprisingly, is full of them.
Western Australia’s late 1800s establishment was aggressively accelerated by the proceeds of gold exploration – and later, sales – and helped to establish the state as the country’s economic engineroom even in the early 20th Century.
What that means is there’s lots of gold processing infrastructure lying around the place; a small exploration company doesn’t necessarily need to rely on being bought out.
Instead, a small player can become a producer simply by inking good terms on which to use another’s processing asset.
Most of the time this is a win-win – most processing mills are only profitable if they run 24/7, and there’s not always a perpetual supply of ore.
In that light, processing plant sharing agreements are abundantly common, and provide companies like Redcastle Resources a low-CapEx pathway to production – and sales.
While that remains to be seen – assays in January 2025 will be more eagerly awaited by investors first – it’s clear Redcastle has what it takes to land on the map.
Disclaimer: Redcastle contributed content for this article.
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