Modern Mining January 2023

Prieska copper-zinc project

Revised Prieska project development strategy With prevailing positive macro-economic factors and the continued long-term positive outlook for both copper and zinc – key metals that are growing in demand for their role in an increasingly electrified and decarbonised world – Orion’s revised strategy allows the company to capitalise on the positive near-term base metals market with a fast-tracked, yet smaller, route to first production and revenue generation. Orion’s early production scenario, which impor tantly maintains the core elements and material assumptions for the mine plan as outlined in the 2020 BFS, is assessing the merit of a phased devel opment approach at Prieska in a manner that brings forward the start of production and allows for dewa tering of the underground workings to begin ahead of the final investment decision for the full-scale 200,000 tonne per month Prieska Deeps mine proj ect as originally planned in the 2020 BFS. The strategy is investigating the upfront mining of the crown and above water remnant pillars rather than at the end of the project life; early extraction

While Smart could not give too much detail on production levels before finalisation of the BFS, he says the project would likely undergo a three phase ramp up to reach steady state throughput of

Hutchings Shaft headframe and cleared site at Prieska Mine.

Left: Investor visit to rehabilitated ore access point on 147 level.

Below: Investor visit by Triple Flag and IDC to rehabilitated underground haulage.

of the remnant pillars left behind dur ing historic mining operations; and the start of dewatering of the underground workings using a modular configuration, ahead of the scale up to the full-scale pumping rate proposed in the 2020 BFS. The work streams to form part of Prieska’s early production BFS comprise a six-month trial underground mining programme of selected near surface remnant pillars and the +105 crown pil lars; ore processing modular re-design; mineral resource est imat ion; ore reserves re-statement; and the financial modelling of the selected mining meth ods for the remnant pillar mining and the ore processing re-design.

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