• Orion Minerals settles final consideration for Okiep Copper Project, completing a five-year acquisition of a district that produced over 2 million tonnes of copper historically
• The Flat Mines area holds 12 million tonnes at 1.4% copper for 160,000 tonnes of contained metal, with a 12-year DFS-confirmed mine plan targeting 9,000 tonnes of copper per year
• Okiep sits within Southern Africa's broader copper belt and complements Orion's Prieska mine, positioning the company as a significant regional copper producer as energy transition demand accelerates

Orion Minerals has settled the final acquisition consideration for the Okiep Copper Project in South Africa's Northern Cape, completing a transaction that began in 2021 and securing its controlling interest in one of the country's most historically significant copper districts.

Settlement of the Final Acquisition Consideration, scheduled to occur by 19 March 2026, followed receipt of exchange control approval from the Foreign Surveillance Department of the South African Reserve Bank, the last outstanding suspensive condition.

The consideration comprised ZAR2.30 million in cash and ZAR12.44 million satisfied through the issue of 71.91 million fully paid ordinary Orion shares. A conditional deferred consideration, known under South African property law as an agterskot, remains payable to vendors and will be calculated against a formula disclosed in Orion's April 2024 release. 

The company also retains an obligation to spend ZAR6.35 million on exploration across the mineral projects acquired from Bulletrap Copper Co and Nababeep Copper Company by 30 November 2026, with drilling programs already underway across the project area.

The remaining mineral rights for the BCC and NCC portions of the transaction have now been granted by the South African Department of Mineral Resources and Petroleum and will be lodged for registration in the name of New Okiep Exploration.

 Prospecting rights relating to the SAFTA portion of the acquisition remain subject to ongoing regulatory grant processes.

The Okiep district where the project sits carries one of the most compelling copper pedigrees on the African continent.

 Previous owners produced more than two million tonnes of copper from the Okiep district over 150 years (Orion Minerals) , with Newmont and Goldfields at their peak producing between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes of copper metal per annum over many decades. 

The district effectively went dormant after the 1980s as a combination of falling copper prices, deeper orebody access challenges, and capital constraints made continued operation commercially unviable. The project is now being revived at a moment when copper's strategic importance has rarely been higher.

Copper is the metal most directly tied to the global energy transition. Every electric vehicle requires roughly three to four times more copper than a conventional internal combustion vehicle. 

Every wind turbine, solar panel array, and grid-scale battery storage installation demands copper wiring, busbars, and conductors in quantities that analysts consistently project will outstrip mine supply through the 2030s. 

The Northern Cape's copper assets, largely ignored for forty years, are being reappraised in that demand context, and Orion is positioned to be the primary vehicle through which the region returns to meaningful copper production.

The OCP ground holdings cover 641 square kilometres and encompass the majority of the area where 105 million tonnes is reported to have been mined in the district over the past 100 years. 

 The current mineral resource within the Flat Mines area, which forms the foundation phase of Orion's development plan, stands at 12 million tonnes grading 1.4% copper for 160,000 tonnes of contained copper, with strong upside potential as the exploration campaign advances. 

Drilling intersections at Flat Mine East have returned grades as high as 5.05% copper over nearly 50 metres, suggesting the orebody contains zones of substantially higher grade than the overall resource average implies.

The foundation phase Definitive Feasibility Study completed in March 2025 confirmed a 12-year life-of-mine plan processing 780,000 tonnes of ore per year at steady state from four underground areas which include Flat Mine North, Flat Mine Nababeep, Flat Mine East, and Flat Mine South. 

At full production, the plan targets 9,000 tonnes per year of copper in concentrates from the Flat Mines area alone. This would be supplementary to the 22,000 to 23,000 tonnes per year of copper production targeted from Orion's flagship Prieska Copper Zinc Mine, also in the Northern Cape, where first production is targeted for late 2026 following a US$250 million prepayment facility signed with Glencore in February 2026.

 The combined production profile, if both projects execute as planned, would make Orion a materially significant copper producer in the Southern African context.

Okiep does not stand alone as a Southern African copper asset. 

The region sits within a broader belt of copper mineralisation that extends from the Northern Cape northward through Zambia's Copperbelt, one of the world's most copper-rich geological corridors and into the Democratic Republic of Congo. Zambia and the DRC together account for a significant proportion of global copper mine output.

 South Africa's Northern Cape is geologically part of the same Proterozoic tectonic system that hosts those world-class deposits, though its copper endowment has historically been smaller-scale and more fragmented, comprising numerous high-grade but individually modest orebodies rather than the massive bulk tonnage deposits of the Copperbelt.

 That geology, with multiple high-grade, structurally controlled orebodies across a large land package, is precisely the kind of setting that rewards systematic exploration with significant resource growth over time, which is the upside case Orion is pursuing beyond the Flat Mines foundation phase.

Orion's selection for BHP's 2026 Xplor accelerator program, announced in February, adds institutional validation to the exploration potential assessment. BHP, which is itself the world's largest copper producer and has staked its growth strategy heavily on copper, does not select projects for its accelerator without a credible view of district-scale potential.

Tony Lennox, Orion's Managing Director and CEO, described the settlement as an important milestone, noting the company's confidence in the exploration potential across the Okiep district and its commitment to completing the remaining drilling obligations by November 2026.