JOHANNESBURG - Junior mining company Orion Minerals has reported that all directors and executives, including the chief executive, Errol Smart, had agreed to pay cuts effective Friday due to the Covid-19 national lockdown.
The JSE and Australian listed company which is developing the Prieska Copper-Zinc mine in the Northern Cape said non-executive directors had agreed to reduce director fees to zero. It said executives had agreed to reduce the cash component of their remuneration or fee packages by 20 percent.
It said Smart’s remuneration package would now include a significant reduction in the cash component of his package.
Chairman, Denis Waddell, said that the directors and the management team’s agreement to reduce the cash component of their fees demonstrated the team’s commitment to the company and the development of the Prieska Project.
“Orion has assembled an excellent management team and it is pleasing that all members of the team have agreed to a reduction in their remuneration to enable the Company to retain the team and maximize the funds available to progress the development of the Prieska Project,” Waddell said.
The company also said that it had significantly reduced the number of its employees and contractors and undertaken a range of prudent initiatives to cut costs in an effort to mitigate against the impact of Covid-19 and the uncertainty in financial markets. It said exploration work was currently suspended, and revised short-medium term work programs were refocussed on the development of Prieska.
Prieska was historically mined between the 1970s and 1990s, and Orion. Orion is currently investigating the feasibility of developing a new mine in the footprint of the historical Prieska Mine, using the extensive remaining infrastructure, with the intent of extracting the unmined zinc-copper mineralization from the Prieska Deposit.