Castle Silver Resources has started underground extraction at its namesake silver and cobalt property near Gowganda.
The Coquitlam, B.C.-based junior miner announced on June 6 that it has removed a large sample from a quartz-carbonate vein structure containing visible cobalt on the first level of the former Castle Silver Mine.
It’s the first in a series of bulk samples to be taken over the next few weeks in conjunction with the start of the first phase of underground drilling.
Some of the mineralized material is being submitted for immediate assaying. The remainder will be put through the company's own proprietary hydrometallurgical process that produces high purity cobalt powders for buyers in the lithium-ion battery sector.
Castle Silver (formerly Takara Resources) has its 3,200-hectare Castle Silver-Cobalt Project, 85 kilometres northwest of the historic Cobalt silver mining camp, and former Beaver and Violet mines near Cobalt.
The former Castle Silver Mine operated sporadically between 1917 and 1989 producing a total of 692,302,483 grams silver from the No. 3 shaft.
The company believes the property has the potential to host a significant high-grade silver deposit and base metal credits in addition to known cobalt mineralization.
The company’s plans for 2017 include lining up targets in preparation for both surface and underground drilling, and metallurgical testing of tailings and waste rock samples at the Castle and Beaver properties to determine the most effective way of extracting silver, cobalt and other metals left behind from previous mining.
