ORION Minerals, the Australian company that bought South Africa’s historic O’Kiep Copper Complex in the Northern Cape, saw its shares price rise by nearly 4 percent yesterday morning after it announced encouraging assay results from the first four holes of a maiden drilling programme at its Okiep project.
According to the company, the exploration drilling was designed to test and expand mineralisation intersected in historical drilling.
“Drilling is currently focused on the Carolusberg-Koperberg line of intrusives,” the company said in a statement.
The Carolusberg Complex was the biggest contributor to historical mining in the Okiep Copper District delivering 38Mt grading 1.54 percent Cu out of the reported total of 105Mt mined over the past 100 years, said the JSE- and Australian Securities Exchange-listed company.
Orion managing director and chief executive Errol Smart said the company was thrilled with the first assay results: “The results we’ve received to date have confirmed the historical drill results for high-grade sulphide copper mineralisation near surface and, more importantly, confirming our geological hypothesis for a model for intrusive bodies arranged in en-echelon side-stepping lenses.”
According to reports, O’Kiep, near Springbok in the north-west of the province, produced 2 million tons of copper during 150 years of operation before it was closed.
Orion Minerals, which is a small mining outfit, is also developing a multibillion-rand copper to zinc project in Kimberley, which they acquired in 2017.
BUSINESS REPORT ONLINE