Graphite player Castle Minerals winds up latest RC drilling in Ghana, assays pending

Smallcap graphite player and self-described “project incubator” Castle Minerals (ASX:CDT) flagged its completion of the latest RC drilling at its Kambale Graphite Project in Ghana on Wednesday.

All in all, the company sunk 30 holes for a total depth of 2,290m. By all means a decent run, though, still a fairly tame campaign. 

Some 300kg of core samples are now on the way to Perth, WA, where testwork will be conducted on samples as well as generalised assay results. 

In November last year, Castle reported a JORC compliant exploration target for “16.82 to 50.46 million tonnes [of ore] at a grade between 6.745 and 10.40% total graphitic carbon.” 

Worth noting is those core samples come from a previously executed diamond drill run at Kambale, the type of drill rig which produces actual cylindrical cores. 

Testwork timing 

Management is optimistic about the diamond drill core samples being sent to Perth for analysis.

“Our Ghana team worked through Christmas to ensure we remain on schedule this March Quarter, including to confirm if we can produce a commercial grade concentrate,” company chief Stephen Stone said. 

“It’s going to be a very interesting year for the Project underpinned by the many forecasts for a looming graphite supply deficit on the back of the predicted increase in worldwide sales of electric vehicles and stationary power storage units.”

Graphite is heavily used in EV batteries, grid-scale Battery Storage systems, and other decarbonisation technologies. 

Graphite in batteries

While graphite has consistently landed on investor’s radars, and is generally well known as an EV battery metal, it has never quite had its day under the sun in line with mammoth expectations from true bullish believers. 

Graphite’s inclusion into batteries requires it to be spherized downstream, and you can only do that with a certain type of “flake size (natural graphite deposits are “crumbly.”) 

What quality of graphite, exactly, Castle sits on remains to be fully understood. 

This year, testwork will be conducted by a European laboratory.

Word of caution 

Castle Minerals is a microcap with a market cap of $22.9m and nearly 1bn shares issued. 

Liquidity is quite subdued on the charts and so investors who buy shares at a price which later falls may find themselves stuck for a while as subdued trading volumes limits their available windows to sell (at desired prices.) 

The company’s share price performance is down -36% on a one year basis and down -8% over the last month.

Castle Minerals' three month charts