12 min
Rich copper intercept in N Cape sends Orion's shares soaring on Australian exchange MiningWeekly.com Audio Articles
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The richness of South Africa's copper assets were emphasised on Monday when Northern Cape mine developer and explorer Orion Minerals published a standout intercept that sent its shares rocketing up 58% on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
Orion, headed by CEO Errol Smart, is primarily listed on the ASX, where it has 1 300 shareholders, and secondarily listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), where it has 28 000 shareholders.
Prieska is its flagship development, where trial mining is already under way, and Okiep will be the district of its Flat Mines mining development, while two exploration projects are also under way.
"Prieska is the big chocolate cake. There are not very many cherries in Prieska, it's just a massive chocolate.
"Okiep is a chocolate cake with a whole lot of cherries mixed in and you keep finding these, and that's what we've seen today," said Smart.
Nothing like the high-grade copper intercept in the Flat Mines area of Okiep copper project, of 4.89% copper at 49 m and including 12.47% copper at 10.23 m, has been seen in South Africa in the last 40 years.
"Yes, it's in a zone where there were known intersections but at least now we've proved that it isn't a fluke, it isn't a one-off. There's a large zone of very high-grade mineralisation at this site," Smart during a webinar in Australia, covered by Mining Weekly.
"I had a federal trader in Sydney last week that was saying to me if you guys have got anything above 11%, we'll take it as direct shipping ore, they'll collect the broken rock at the mine portal and drive it away. That puts us into the context of what it is and it puts Okiep in the context of what this district is.
"The original Okiep mined over 900 000 t of hand-sorted ore at 21% copper. That's just unheard of. There aren't deposits like that in the world.
"But on our properties, the Okiep mine is also on one of our prospecting rights. There are deposits like this and we've got large known mineralised bodies that haven't been drilled out, and we see huge opportunity here," Boksburg-born Smart added.
Orion has a large undrawn facility from South Africa's Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and from Triple Flag, a precious metals streaming and royalty company, for its Prieska project, and has just done an IDC drawdown for Okiep as well.
Okiep has two development projects and two exploration projects that are well advanced and can add value relatively quickly in the Northern Cape, which has 30% of South Africa's land mass and only 3% of its population.
Historically, the Prieska and Okiep districts, which currently hardly produce at all, have collectively produced about 2.5-million tons of copper.
In consolidating over the last seven years, Orion has done more than 17 acquisitions involving mineral rights and data in an area that was strongly explored by mining majors such as Newmont, AngloVaal, Anglo American and Gold Fields in the 80s and 90s, which opens a door to advanced-stage projects for development.
Orion's flagship is the Prieska mine, which produced 46-million tons from a single, consolidated orebody.
Orion, with 31-million tons of resource there currently, expects this to rise to 50-million tons of resource.
AngloVaal, which developed the mine, in 1971 took it down to 1 200 m, with stoping stopped at 970 m. The mine's deepest ore is predeveloped with shafts and decline roadways to the bottom of the orebody.
Orion believes that it can produce 22 000 t/y of copper and about 79 000 t of zinc for 12 years at Prieska.
The feasibility study that determined this was done at a time when the copper price was $6 600/t and the zinc price $2 300/t, compared with today's zinc prices of $2 850/t and the copper price was touching on $10 000/t on Friday.
A team of 200, including 20 professionals, run Prieska, which is in a trial mining phase of up to 40 000 t a month.
The cornerstone of the financing is in pla
This audio is brought to you by Wearcheck, your condition monitoring specialist.
The richness of South Africa's copper assets were emphasised on Monday when Northern Cape mine developer and explorer Orion Minerals published a standout intercept that sent its shares rocketing up 58% on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
Orion, headed by CEO Errol Smart, is primarily listed on the ASX, where it has 1 300 shareholders, and secondarily listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), where it has 28 000 shareholders.
Prieska is its flagship development, where trial mining is already under way, and Okiep will be the district of its Flat Mines mining development, while two exploration projects are also under way.
"Prieska is the big chocolate cake. There are not very many cherries in Prieska, it's just a massive chocolate.
"Okiep is a chocolate cake with a whole lot of cherries mixed in and you keep finding these, and that's what we've seen today," said Smart.
Nothing like the high-grade copper intercept in the Flat Mines area of Okiep copper project, of 4.89% copper at 49 m and including 12.47% copper at 10.23 m, has been seen in South Africa in the last 40 years.
"Yes, it's in a zone where there were known intersections but at least now we've proved that it isn't a fluke, it isn't a one-off. There's a large zone of very high-grade mineralisation at this site," Smart during a webinar in Australia, covered by Mining Weekly.
"I had a federal trader in Sydney last week that was saying to me if you guys have got anything above 11%, we'll take it as direct shipping ore, they'll collect the broken rock at the mine portal and drive it away. That puts us into the context of what it is and it puts Okiep in the context of what this district is.
"The original Okiep mined over 900 000 t of hand-sorted ore at 21% copper. That's just unheard of. There aren't deposits like that in the world.
"But on our properties, the Okiep mine is also on one of our prospecting rights. There are deposits like this and we've got large known mineralised bodies that haven't been drilled out, and we see huge opportunity here," Boksburg-born Smart added.
Orion has a large undrawn facility from South Africa's Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and from Triple Flag, a precious metals streaming and royalty company, for its Prieska project, and has just done an IDC drawdown for Okiep as well.
Okiep has two development projects and two exploration projects that are well advanced and can add value relatively quickly in the Northern Cape, which has 30% of South Africa's land mass and only 3% of its population.
Historically, the Prieska and Okiep districts, which currently hardly produce at all, have collectively produced about 2.5-million tons of copper.
In consolidating over the last seven years, Orion has done more than 17 acquisitions involving mineral rights and data in an area that was strongly explored by mining majors such as Newmont, AngloVaal, Anglo American and Gold Fields in the 80s and 90s, which opens a door to advanced-stage projects for development.
Orion's flagship is the Prieska mine, which produced 46-million tons from a single, consolidated orebody.
Orion, with 31-million tons of resource there currently, expects this to rise to 50-million tons of resource.
AngloVaal, which developed the mine, in 1971 took it down to 1 200 m, with stoping stopped at 970 m. The mine's deepest ore is predeveloped with shafts and decline roadways to the bottom of the orebody.
Orion believes that it can produce 22 000 t/y of copper and about 79 000 t of zinc for 12 years at Prieska.
The feasibility study that determined this was done at a time when the copper price was $6 600/t and the zinc price $2 300/t, compared with today's zinc prices of $2 850/t and the copper price was touching on $10 000/t on Friday.
A team of 200, including 20 professionals, run Prieska, which is in a trial mining phase of up to 40 000 t a month.
The cornerstone of the financing is in pla
12 min