AMN - SOUTH AFRICA: Strong progress made at Prieska

Orion Minerals is making strong progress with drilling and assessment of existing infrastructure at the Prieska Zinc-Copper Project (PC) in South Africa. Orion completed the PC acquisition in March 2017 for an effective 73.33% interest and fully complies with South African Black Economic Empowerment legislation.

The ASX-listed company is targeting dip and strike extensions to historical underground mining areas at PC, with mineralisation previously delineated by extensive drilling and geophysics by previous owners.

The Deep Sulphide Target is the down-dip extension to mineralisation previously mined at the Prieska Copper Mine, which is the cornerstone of Orion’s development strategy.

The current drilling program is scoped to systematically test and confirm the extensive historical drilling with the aim of underpinning a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate.

In late May, the company said it had generated strong on-ground momentum with the first two pre-collars completed and casing being set to enable coring to commence. A further two pre-collars were in progress.

An ongoing drilling program at the +105 Level Target is designed to confirm, in-fill and extend the historical drilling, targeting mineralisation that would be amenable to open pit mining.

Assays have been received from diamond drilling completed between January and March. The holes were designed to test areas up-dip from historical mining areas.

One hole returned a strong intersection of 11.53 metres @ 3.23% zinc, 0.97% copper and 0.22 g/t gold from 189.22 metres down-hole, including a higher-grade zone of 3.34 metres @ 5.26% zinc, 1.51% copper and 0.36 g/t gold from 189.22 metres down-hole.

This result is the furthest drill hole along the southeast strike that Orion has undertaken on the target and confirms the continuity and tenor of mineralisation at the +105 Level Target.

Two holes were drilled to confirm the up-dip limit of the supergene sulphide zone and intersected the leached/oxidised zone as expected. These holes are a key part of delineating the mineralisation zone for use in the estimation of a mineral resource.

Significant oxide intersections were returned from shallow levels, including 4.12 metres @ 2.83% copper and 0.35% zinc from 119.48 metres downhole and 5.94 metres @ 1.16% zinc and 0.58% copper from 59.56 metres downhole.

Modelling of the mineralisation intersected in the drilling is under way with the objective of producing a maiden JORC mineral resource to underpin pre-feasibility studies with a target completion date of late 2017.

Orion has also made significant progress with the assessment of existing infrastructure, in particular the re-opening of the primary underground access via both the decline roadway and the main Hutchings shaft.

www.orionminerals.com.au