AMN - SOUTH AFRICA – Prieska to reopen by end of year

Orion Minerals expects to restart the Prieska Polymetallic Project in South Africa by the end of 2020. The company last year purchased the closed underground zinc-copper mine, which is regarded as a “giant” in South Africa’s resources sector.

The re-opening has been made possible by new mining and processing breakthroughs to these historic ore deposits.

Addressing the Paydirt 2018 Africa Down Under mining conference in Perth, Orion's managing director Errol Smart said the 12-month bankable feasibility study (BFS) schedule for Prieska should be completed next quarter.

The project is 270 kilometres southwest of Kimberley, the regional capital of Northern Cape province.

The BFS is buoyed by the mine’s existing access to significant local and regional infrastructure, with a mine infrastructure which already includes a regional power grid feed, bitumen access roads, access to a bulk, treated water supply and a 1900-metre landing strip.

Prieska, which operated for 20 years and at one time employed up to 4,500 people before becoming uneconomic, has a defined maiden resource of 1.1 million tonnes of contained zinc grading 3.8% and 365,000 tonnes of contained copper grading an average 1.2%.

The deposit is regarded as one of the world’s 30 largest VMS ore bodies.

Mining and environmental applications have already been lodged focused on initiating updated mine construction work by the second half of next year.

Errol Smart said, “We are mounting an ongoing drilling program with the objective of achieving an upgrade in the classification of a substantial portion of the total mineral resource and to test the currently open extensions of the deposit.

“Critically, a detailed engineering appraisal has confirmed the integrity of key installations at Prieska and this will deliver we expect into the VFS, significant capital cost and time savings.

“In addition, we have been able to apply advanced mine design and flow sheet approaches to optimise substantial remaining ore bodies at Prieska and to exploit some opportunity remaining for open-pit mining.

“We have also embarked on securing a regional exploration footprint of around 1,790sqkm, the first time this highly prospective region has been consolidated under a single owner for the first time.”

He said the new concentrated drill schedules aimed to evolve Prieska as a mining hub around further discovery in the local footprint.

“Our application of new technology has discovered a whole lot more ore and we are also able to promote safer mining operations than historically employed on site.

“The project is being fast-tracked to deliver our production targets as ground conditions and infrastructure in the underground mine to date have been found to generally be in a better state than was expected.

“Orion is confident that mine refurbishment will not require substantial engineering effort,” he added.

www.orionminerals.com.au