Castle Minerals Limited (ASX:CDT) has added to its stable of Western Australian exploration projects with an agreement to acquire an 80% interest in an exploration licence at Beasley Creek in the West Pilbara.
The company said the Beasley Creek area encompasses 16km strike of Hardey Formation stratigraphy including at least 2km strike of its prospective basal conglomerate horizon with very encouraging, coincident historical surficial gold workings and recent detector diggings.
The Hardey Conglomerate unit, as mapped by the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA), is described as a ‘clast supported polymictic, pebble to boulder conglomerate with the clasts derived from the underlying greenstone succession’.
Castle Managing Director, Stephen Stone, said that description is consistent with field observations by Castle geologists who have completed an orientation appraisal of the area during which boulders of Hardey Conglomerate were observed on spoil dumps.
“We are extremely pleased to have acquired in a very competitive environment another high-quality project where the presence of Hardey Formation over 16km strike with at least 2km strike of GSWA mapped Hardey conglomerate, coincident historical gold workings and conglomerate boulders in spoil heaps confirm its excellent prospectivity for Witswatersrand-style conglomerate hosted gold,” said Castle Managing Director, Stephen Stone.
Hot on the heels of the recent Coolyia Creek Project purchase, this acquisition continues Castle’s strategy to refocus on acquiring a stable of quality, early-stage West Australian projects offering accelerated value appreciation, with other deals also under consideration, Mr Stone said.
The 25 block, 79km2 licence application (ELA 47/3490) has previously been explored for a range of commodities including gold, copper, diamonds, iron ore and gemstones.
Mr Stone said Castle is presently compiling and reviewing historical reports and data and collating other available datasets prior to planning a first-pass field evaluation programme. This will comprise detailed mapping to confirm in-situ and define the Hardey Conglomerate horizon, to determine if there are unexposed east-west extensions to what was mapped by the GSWA and to map other key stratigraphic units in the area; rock-chip, lag, soil and stream sediment sampling and metal detecting.
Castel is acquiring an 80% interest in ELA 47/3940, with the vendor’s 20% interest free carried to a decision to mine, comprises an Initial Consideration of a non-refundable cash consideration of $80,000 and 2 million new ordinary Castle shares.
Upon Settlement of the transaction, including the grant of and subsequent registration of Castle’s interest in the licence, the Vendor will receive a Deferred Consideration in two parts; a First Milestone of $50,000 cash and 2.0M Castle shares and a Second Milestone Payment comprising 2.0M Castle Performance Rights that will vest as and when Castle submits a Form 5 expenditure report of greater than $500,000 expenditure.
