Castle Minerals new gold discovery in Ghana
THE DRILL SERGEANT: First pass RC drilling undertaken by Perth-based Castle Minerals at its Baayari prospect in north-west Ghana has intersected a strong zone of gold mineralisation.
The Baayiri prospect is within the Julie –Jang Trend, a gold corridor that has never previously been explored.
Drilling at Baayiri is part of Castle’s wider exploration program on its 10,000 square kilometre Wa prospect.
Castle’s Wa project in north-west Ghana covers over 10,000sqkm where exploration is focussing on four regional scale prospect corridors.
The company began an 80,000m drilling program in December 2010 testing a large number of gold prospects within each of the prospect corridors.
The recent drilling was carried out to test, what the company considered to be, testing a 12 kilometre by six kilometre area of strong gold anomalism,
Results have returned reports of intercepts including 55 metres at 1.82 grams per tonne from 15m, 5m at 6.64 g/t from surface, and 20m at 0.55 g/t gold from 10m.
Over the past four years, Castle has engaged in systematic exploration of key geochemical targets at Wa that had already yielded three significant virgin discoveries.
The results at Baayiri are the most significant for the company to date, providing it encouragement that substantial gold mineralisation could be present in the area.
“The RC drilling, as a first test, targeted eleven spot geochemical highs with results received for the first 18, of the 33 holes drilled,” the company said in an announcement.
Castle will have a drill rig back on site at Baayiri immediately to commence additional drilling.
Elsewhere within the Wa Project, RAB and auger drilling and soil geochemical programs are ongoing and Castle has approximately 5,000 samples awaiting analysis.
Castle Minerals managing director Mike Ivey said the discovery represented a major vindication of the Company’s Ghana exploration strategy.
“The disseminated nature of the mineralisation is suggestive of a broad and possibly large scale pervasive mineralising event providing encouragement that this is a substantial deposit,” Ivey said in the announcement.
“The width, grade and near surface nature of the intercept has obvious economic implications and we are keen to recommence drilling as soon as possible to determine the exact geometry and scope of the mineralisation intercepted.”
The company articulated that large gold deposits hosted within intrusive rocks are common in Ghana, using the six million ounce Ayanfuri and 17 million ounce Ahafo discoveries as examples.
“The discovery of mineralised intrusives at Baayiri is very positive for the broader Wa project,” the company said.