Orion Acquires Key Surface Rights At Its New Okiep Mining, Flat Mines Project
Orion Acquires Key Surface Rights At Its New Okiep Mining, Flat Mines Project. Orion Minerals Ltd is pleased to advise that it has reached an agreement to access and acquire the surface ownership rights of properties owned by Mora Plase Proprietary Limited. These properties, known as Farm Nababeep and Farm Plaatjesfontein (Farms Nababeep) overlie most of the area covering the Flat Mines Project where Orion’s majority owned subsidiary, New Okiep Mining Company, holds a Mining Right and Prospecting Right applications at the Okiep Copper Project in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa.
Orion is progressing a Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS) for the Flat Mines Project and is progressing Prospecting Right applications on the surrounding area, where known mineral deposits present significant upside potential. Importantly, this surface right access and ownership will allow Orion to optimise the location of surface infrastructure including roadways, underground access and ventilation holings for the Flat Mines Project.
As a result of the acquisition, Orion will also immediately have access to undertake a drilling program to confirm the expected metallurgical zonation and geotechnical assessments of the deposits that Orion has included in the Flat Mines Project BFS, with the data expected to enhance and further de-risk the BFS outcomes.
Ownership of the surface area will also allow Orion to optimise ongoing Social and Labour Plan projects such as community agriculture while also providing suitable land to locate renewable energy generation, such as solar and wind plants, that are expected to deliver significant benefits for the future mining operations and to the surrounding communities. The surface ownership over the remaining areas that will be impacted in the foreseeable future is by the Nama Khoi Local Municipality, with whom Orion has already secured an access and surface use agreement.
Orion has mobilised drill rigs to execute a 3,000m twin hole drilling program over the Flat Mines East and Flat Mines North deposits and conduct confirmatory geotechnical and metallurgical test work. The drilling and test work program will be completed in the current quarter, with the results to be incorporated into an optimised BFS that will be externally reviewed in the following quarter before release scheduled for June 2024. The previous lack of surface access has prevented the drilling of validation holes into portions of the Flat Mines deposits. As a result, Orion has based all of the estimations used in the BFS on 128km of historical Newmont and Goldfields drilling records that were validated by 2,331m of twin drilling by previous owners Southern African Tantalum Mining (Pty) Ltd. Unfortunately, the drill core from Newmont and Goldfields is not available for geotechnical studies and important test work such as for XRF ore sorting. Access to fresh drill core is expected to materially enhance the data used in the BFS
Additional in-fill and twin hole drilling planned to be conducted on Farms Nababeep, will also provide the required information to improve resource classification at the Flat Mine Nababeep, and Jan Coetzee Mines (refer ASX/JSE release 29 March 2021), where 37km of historical Newmont and Goldfields drilling has intersected significant mineralisation that provides compelling upside potential for the expansion and extension of the Flat Mines Project. Orion is currently not able to include these Inferred resources in current mine planning.
