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Castile spreading the love

opper is looming large as the major driv-
Cing force behind Castile Resources Ltd’s
ambition to establish a new processing hub in
the Northern Territory.
There is a copper angle to each of the four
main targets Castile is aggressively pursuing
on its 1,054sq km ground holding in the Rover
mineral field, about 80km south-west of Ten-
nant Creek.
A 10,000m diamond drilling programme
covering those four targets – Rover 1, Ex-
plorer 108, Explorer 142 and Rover 3 – kicked
off in late March. It marks the start of the first
full field season for the company since the
demerger of the NT assets from Westgold Castile is in the midst of a 10,000m drilling programme in the Rover mineral field, Northern
Resources Ltd in February 2020. Territory. It is the company’s first full field season since the copper and gold assets were
With copper prices continuing to surge, demerged from Westgold Resources early last year
Castile managing director Mark Hepburn said Rover 1 hosts a resource of 6.9mt @ 1.74
it was an opportune time for the company to g/t gold, 2.07 g/t silver and 1.2% copper (or
showcase the red metal potential within the 2.5% gold equivalent) and is currently subject
Rover mineral field. to a PFS slated for release later this year. The
“When we floated the gold was the super- drilling now under way is focused on exten-
star…but everyone seems to have forgotten sions to the high-grade gold core defined
about the copper, particularly at Rover 1,” last year as the primary foundation for mining
Hepburn told Paydirt. studies.
“When copper was at $US2/lb, no one was Drilling at Explorer 108, 35km west of Rov-
really showing much interest, but of course er 1, will test for primary sources of large cop-
now we’re drilling these massive copper tar- per anomalism proximal to the virgin lead-zinc
gets and copper has literally gone from $US2/ discoveries previously made at this prospect.
lb to $US4.50/lb, it makes a really big differ- Hepburn said this target was thought to be
ence. an analogue to the system at Mt Isa, about
“From our perspective, some of the pric- 600km to the east.
ing and modelling we’re doing right now is still “There’s already 6mt @ 0.4% copper there
well under what the current prices are in both but it’s not the primary source, so if we can lo-
gold and copper, so I think we are in for a very cate the primary source and drill that we could
exciting few months.” be seriously looking at a Mt Isa-style minerali-
Castile was forced to wait until August last sation,” he said. Mark Hepburn
year before undertaking its maiden drilling “Mt Isa was set up to have the lead-zinc at million in the bank to fund its ongoing explo-
campaign at Rover due to the various COV- the top and the copper below and we’ve got a ration and development. This current round
ID-19 shutdowns in the preceding months. 12mt resource with lead and zinc sitting in ex- of drilling is expected to wrap sometime next
However, when the company was finally able actly the same geological setting, same strati- month, and the company will make a decision
to mobilise the rigs to site and punch the first graphic setting, same everything as Mt Isa.” on where to focus next based on the incom-
hole into the ground, there was no looking Explorer 142 is considered a lookalike of ing results.
back. Rover, which is 30km to the west. Drilling has Hepburn said the company had made a
The first hole into the Rover 1 target deliv- so far only tested part of the overall anomaly conscious decision to raise $20 million for last
ered a mouth-watering intercept of 30.4m @ at this target, but enough to define an inferred year’s IPO and so far, it was proving to be a
35.6 g/t gold and 1.46% copper and quickly resource of 176,000t @ 5.2% copper. masterstroke.
changed the Castile team’s views on the size “We see 142 as having a very similar geo- “When we were doing the demerger, we
and potential of the “bonanza” gold zone at logical setting to Rover 1, so really that means thought calling this as an exploration play was
the company’s premier target in the Rover if we find something at 142 similar to Rover a bit unfair given we’ve already had a scoping
mineral field. 1, we’ve simply doubled everything up and it study done on Rover 1 and a lot of other pre-
“It’s a pretty good start to your listed life will be within easy access of the processing production stuff as well,” he said.
when you’re hitting one of the best holes that hub that we’ll be looking to develop at Rover “It’s not just exploration that we’re doing, so
was drilled in Australia last year,” Hepburn 1,” Hepburn said. we thought given the interest and the valua-
said. “It’s a very similar story at a prospect called tion we had around the assets it was appro-
“From there on we were drilling slightly Rover 3 which we’ll also be drilling in this pro- priate to raise that sort of money. At the end
more wildcat, more exploratory-type holes gramme. Again, it’s only 13.5km to the north- of the day it’s about getting dollars into the
with the time we had. Unfortunately, we really east of Rover 1…so we simply tack it on once ground and being in a position to advance
only had a 3-4 month window of drilling once we’re up and running.” these projects.”
we got stuck into the field season last year, At the time of print, Castile had just over $13 – Michael Washbourne
but we were very happy with all the results.”

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT JUNe 2021 Page 39