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Castle locks away 2022 exploration funds

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Matt BirneyThe West Australian
Further sampling work will determine Castle’s future drilling plans.
Camera IconFurther sampling work will determine Castle’s future drilling plans. Credit: File

Battery metals and gold explorer Castle Minerals has boosted its war chest this week after a heavily oversubscribed $3.6 million placement with the market responding positively, pushing the stock above 4 cents.

The gains represent a 25 per cent uplift for investors who took up the 3c offer and follow an earlier September raise of $1.5m at 1.2c.

Castle now has around $6m to spend on its Ghanese and West Australian base metals and gold projects with the ultimate intention of confirming ‘flag-ship’ status at one or more of the assets.

The market capitalisation of Castle has doubled in the last month to $35m, this week’s 4c share price is up from the December lows of 2.2c.

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Castle has almost a dozen early-stage mineral projects it has been beavering away at to get as it looks to get to “drill-ready” status, including battery metals, base metals and gold.

After the graphite concentrate grades from its Kambale graphite project in Ghana’s Upper West region in West Africa were judged commercially acceptable in September 2021, Castle said it would carry out a ground EM geophysics survey and some drilling to define Kambale’s limits and grade distribution ahead of sampling for further lab work in Perth.

Castle will also be revving up activity on its recently acquired Kendenup graphite project near Mt. Barker in the south of Western Australia.

Kendenup contains the historical Kendenup graphite mine which has not seen a drill rig for several decades. Castle has lodged an application for an adjacent licence that hosts the Martigullup graphite occurrences and associated EM anomalies that require more extensive drill testing.

Also in the south west of WA Castle is sitting on licence applications for its Wilgee Springs and Woodcutters targets that are close to the world-class Greenbushes deposit. Once granted, Castle will be chasing spodumene bearing pegmatites.

Further to the north of WA, it has the Beasley Creek and Potelle gold projects that are all earmarked for imminent further on-ground work.

Today’s heavily oversubscribed $3.6 million placement is a great start to 2022 and will boost Castle’s working capital to $6.0 million placing the Company on a stronger footing to accelerate work at its Battery Metals projects in Western Australia and Ghana and to drill in coming months several of the targets it has been defining at its Earaheedy, Beasley Creek and Polelle base metals and gold projects.

Existing and new shareholders can look forward to a strong news flow in the coming months covering progress on our range of exciting and evolving projects.

Castle Minerals Managing Director, Stephen Stone

Castle Minerals has no shortage of projects in good neighbourhoods in which to spend its hard-earned money and it will no doubt be working to prioritise which of these opportunities will command the biggest exploration budget in 2022.

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

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