The dual-listed company has around 5.8 billion shares in the market, but the stock managed to increase around 50% on the ASX today thanks to a stunning result at the virgin Flat Mines East deposit of 49m at 4.89% copper from 231m, including 10m at 12.47%.

Managing director Errol Smart – who is currently in Australia to meet investors and check in on metallurgical work in Brisbane – said the result was the best ever recorded at Okiep. 

It confirmed the tenor of the orebody suggested by work completed in the 1990s and is one of the best recorded globally in decades, he said.

With the price of the red metal tilting up towards US$10,000 per tonne, Orion’s multiple mine development strategy in South Africa may finally be having its day as demand for copper remains tight.

“It’s nice to have the sun at my back and not in my eyes,” he quipped.

Orion has been working on its flagship Prieska project for many years and is already conducting some trial mining, but it is also advancing a feasibility study for the Flat Mine area at Okiep.

Both are due within months, with Smart believing the company can put Orion on a path to being a 50,000-60,000 tonne per annum copper miner by the end of the decade.

Smart said the plan was to start with at Prieska, followed by Flat Mine North, where faces were ready to be mined before operations stopped, and eventually the FME and Flat Mine South deposits.

The company had previously become caught in a “death spiral” of study after study at Prieska several years back, with a bigger project requiring more capital to dewater the mine, with a longer period to cash. It proved too difficult to finance in the lower copper and zinc price environment.

In recent years, Orion revised its strategy to target the shallow supergene and oxide ore initially, allowing time to dewater the deeper workings and generate income that can fund the expansion of the operations.

Orion also completed around 17 deals over seven years to consolidate ownership of Okiep and decades of data for a second hub.

Smart said he believed that when Orion delivered its studies in the coming months, the market would see the real value of its assets.

“There aren’t many near-term copper developments out there, and we have two… and two exploration projects.”

Past owners had become consumed with keeping Okiep’s mills filled, and exploration had fallen by the wayside, leaving Orion dozens of targets with proven copper but little more than scout drilling. 

There are remaining resources at the Flat Mine Area of 9.4Mt at 1.3% copper, including 4.4Mt at 1.3% at Flat Mine East, but the area also contains the original Okiep mine from which ore grading 21% copper was recovered.

Smart said the known resources were commercial today, any ore grading 11% could be sold as direct shipping ore, and there was plenty of exploration upside he was dying to get a drillbit into once the company was in a comfortable funding position.

Orion has proven its operational bona fides with the trial mining at Prieska, which  Smart describes as akin a “chocolate cake”; a “big old beauty” rich and large but with lower-grade resources

Okiep is “like a chocolate cake with cherries in it” – pods of high-grade copper.

The Northern Cape region was once a major copper producer, but “just a drip” comes out now.

Smart hopes to restore its former glory, and if the copper price remains supported by demand and Orion can continue to deliver results like today, that dream will look more and more realistic.

He said there was increasing interest in Orion’s ground, but the company wanted to add more value before it seriously considered any deal.

The focus is on establishing full production, which Smart said would be a lot sooner than people expected. 

Prieska just needs funding for a processing plant he believes will be available once the bankable study is complete.

Okiep’s study results are “hot on its heels” and would see a redevelopment of the North Mine, a new decline at East, and eventually underground workings at South that will pass close to three deposits.

As soon as funding is available, Smart said Orion would consider a consolidation of its shares on the Australian and Johannesburg exchanges, because the company expected to be operating in a different class.