Orion’s third project, the Jacomynspan Nickel-Copper-Cobalt-PGE sulphide (JMP) project offers the potential for a Class-1 nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE-gold underground and open pit mining operation that offers an exceptional opportunity to feed South Africa’s first prospective refinery producing high-purity metal powders for use in the electronics and chemical industries.
JMP is located 65km north of Orion’s flagship Prieska Copper Zinc Mine in South Africa’s Northern Cape. The Project holds an executed Mining Right over a proven Ni-Cu-Co-PGE+Au Intrusive Complex and planning is underway for a trial mining exercise to generate sufficient scale representative bulk sample of Jacomynspan (JMP) ore in order to test innovative metallurgical refining/high purity, ultrafine metal powders production on a pilot scale. Such downstream metallurgical testing of innovative refining/processing, with the potential to improve metallurgical recoveries and revenue generation from sulphide ores of this kind, presents significant upside potential for deposits of this kind.
Orion, which holds a 50% interest and manages the project, is engaging with its project partners, who collectively hold 50% interest in the project, in order to agree on a forward program and budget to maximise the project value.
Resources
JMP is hosted within the Areachap Belt, an under-explored belt with high metal endowment with a confirmed presence of shallow sulphide nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE mineralisation.
Initial drilling, undertaken in 2021, returned a significant high-grade massive sulphide intercept confirming a significant zone of shallow sulphide nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE mineralisation within the ultramafic structure, commencing at a depth of around 85m vertically below the surface.
Jacomynspan currently hosts a JORC Mineral Resource of 65Mt at a 0.2% Ni cut-off. Only a seventh of outcropping mineralisation has been drilled, leaving significant upside potential along this 3km high-priority target. The metals contained include 180,000t Nickel; 121,000t Copper; 12,000t Cobalt and 410,000oz PGEs+Au.
Development strategy
The Namaqua Nickel Mining Right, which was granted by the DMRE in September 2016, was notarially executed with the DMRE in December 2022. An application for the extension of the commencement date of mining operations was submitted to the DMRE in December 2023, to allow time to complete ongoing technical studies and a water use licence application.
Work continues to focus on planning for a trial mining exercise to generate a sufficiently sized representative bulk sample to test innovative metallurgical refining/high purity, ultrafine metal powders at a pilot scale. Orion maintains an exclusivity agreement with Stratega Metals to undertake amenability test work on a 250kg sample of Ni-Cu-Co-PGE-Au concentrates from the Jacomynspan Project.
The refinement and update of a 2013 feasibility study continues and forms the basis of the approved mine works plan. Laboratory scale test work to confirm the amenability of the Jacomynspan concentrates to the Stratega-TCM Metal Vapour Refining Technology is also progressing well.
