Castle Minerals Limited advised that it has applied for two exploration licences (ELA52/4165 and ELA52/4166) adjacent to its Terra Rossa sub-project within its broader Earaheedy base metals project, Western Australia. and a third application (ELA51/2124) covering an area at Woomba Well considered prospective for lithium bearing pegmatites. The Earaheedy Basin project, where Castle has now accumulated a ~930km2 strategic position, is in part adjacent to the similarly named Rumble Resources Limited project which it describes as "an emerging world-class scale Pb-Zn-Ag-Cu base metal system".

Castle's two new applications complement its four existing Terra Rossa licences (three granted, one pending) that form a contiguous area overlapping the rocks of the Paleoproterozoic Earaheedy and Yerrida Basins. These areas have undergone several generations of regional-style exploration consisting of soil sampling, RAB and RC drilling. Historical targeting has been directed towards structurally controlled base metal mineralisation associated with regional structural development within both Basins and towards shear-hosted gold mineralisation within the underlying Archean basement.

The Yerrida Basin rocks also present an opportunity to target copper and lead-zinc mineralisation given the relatively close proximity to the west of the Thaduna and Green Dragon deposits. These deposits are located within the Thaduna Formation. Whilst this does not appear to cross into the Castle tenure, the Juderina Formation, which occurs in the western part of the licence, does host several copper-lead-zinc occurrences.

These include on Castle's tenure the McDonald's Well and Little Well prospects. Fine fraction soil sampling program completed As previously reported (ASX release 7 September 2021), a detailed review of historical work and the reprocessing and interpretation of available open file airborne EM and magnetic data confirmed that several areas at Terra Rossa and in particular in the vicinity of the McDonald Well base metals occurrence present high priority targets analogous to those of Rumble's Chinook-Magazine discoveries as well as Castle's own Sioux prospect on its Withnell licence to the east. The high amount of transported and in-situ cover over the general tenement area has meant that historical exploration has generally been sporadic and results disappointing with only minor amounts of anomalism encountered during various campaigns.

To overcome this impediment, Castle designed and undertook at two priority areas, McDonald Well and Yelma East, soil sampling utilising the fine fraction and CSIRO developed Ultra Fine assay technique. This can be effective in generating gold and base metal anomalies where there is large amount of overburden. Results are awaited.

McDonald Well Soil Sample Grid: Soil sampling at McDonald Well was designed to cover the priority 1 VTEM anomaly targets derived from the reprocessing by Terra Resources P/L of open file geophysics data. The sampling was undertaken on a 200m x 160m grid. Subject to the sampling results, the plan is to then undertake an RC drilling campaign.

Castle management recently inspected the area to consider the logistics for such a program. Yelma East Soil Sample Grid: A 400m x 400m broad-spaced sampling campaign over the Yelma East target covers the central region of E52/3930 where it lies over the interpreted prospective contact between the Yelma and Freer formations and in the vicinity of historical RAB holes. Subject to results, an infill soil sampling will be undertaken to define targets for proposed RC drilling.

Native Title: Negotiations to conclude Native Title Land Access and Mineral Exploration Agreements ("NTLAEA") are in progress with the relevant parties holding Native Title rights to each of Castle's Earaheedy licence areas. These agreements, in addition to other statutory requirements, are a pre-requisite to enable exploration to take place on the various licences. Whilst these negotiations are at an advanced stage it is not possible to determine when they will be finalised and agreements executed whereupon a heritage and site assessment survey will need to be taken in conjunction with the Native Title party and its representatives to consider and approve each specific program proposed by Castle.

Woomba Well License Application. The GSWA critical minerals dataset (Report 233. SW Yilgarn Laterite 2020 Critical Metals digital data) was intensively interrogated to determine areas in Western Australia prospective for buried LCT (lithium, caesium, tantalum) pegmatites hosting possible undiscovered areas of lithium mineralisation.

Data was analysed for the suite of indicator elements considered characteristic of fractionated LCT pegmatites in order to finger print areas suitable for further follow-up and ranking. Elements such as lithium, beryllium, caesium, niobium, rubidium, tin and tantalum were statistically analysed to produce a prospectivity map outlining areas of interest. The Woomba Well license area ranked extremely highly and was surprisingly still available for application.

The area applied for lies along the northern margins of the Gum Creek Greenstone Belt within felsic intrusives of the Tuckanarra Suite and Yilgarn granites. Once granted, initial exploration of the area will consist of a surface geochemical program comprising soil sampling and possible air core drilling. Results from approximately half of the 52-hole, 5,323m RC program completed recently at Castle's Kambale graphite project, Ghana, have been received and will be reported shortly.