Projects
Australian Exploration
Fraser Range Project (Nickel-Copper, Gold)
The Fraser Range Project comprises a substantial tenement holding in the Albany-Fraser Belt of Western Australia, which hosts Australia’s two most significant discoveries of the last decade, the Tropicana Gold Deposit and the Nova-Bollinger Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Deposit.
On 10 March 2017, the Company secured the involvement of IGO Limited (ASX: IGO) the owner of the Nova Bollinger Mine, in the ongoing exploration and evaluation of its highly prospective tenement package in the Fraser Range.
A Joint Venture Agreement (JVA) is now in place under which Orion is free carried to the completion of a pre-feasibility study by IGO over the Fraser Range ground.
IGO Limited is progressing exploration activities including ground-based geophysics over prospective areas delineated by initial air-core drilling completed in 2017.
In January 2020, encouraging diamond drill results were received from the North West Passage, Hook 1 and 2 and Pike prospects within the Fraser Range Belt, with all five diamond holes completed intersecting mafic-ultramafic intrusive bodies.
Orion considers the presence of anastomosing sulphide veins, sulphide-bearing graphite-rich horizons and meta-carbonates as intersected in the host rocks to the mafic-ultramafic bodies to be the ideal setting for the discovery of magmatic massive nickel-copper sulphide deposits.
Follow up drilling began November 2021 by IGO and is expected to be completed early in the 2022 field season.
Latest ASX Announcement on Fraser Range Project
Walhalla Project (Gold, Polymetals)
The Walhalla-Woods Point District is most widely known as one of Victoria’s largest historical goldfields, with significant past production exceeding 4M ounces of gold at a reported head grade of over 25g/t gold.
However, while the Walhalla-Woods Point District is best known for gold mining, high-grade copper-nickel and Platinum Group Element (PGE) mineralisation also occurs within the belt.
Both the gold and copper-nickel-PGE mineralisation within this district is hosted within dykes from the Woods Point Dyke Swarm (WPDS), a series of ultramafic to felsic dykes occurring over a 75km long north-south belt which are now interpreted to be the “plumbing” for a magmatic system of significant scale.
Key Cu-Ni-PGE occurrences are known within the WPDS and three of these lie within Orion’s tenement package. Despite these occurrences being known, sampled and, in the case of Coopers Creek, previously mined, there has only been sporadic exploration for polymetallic deposits (mostly in the 1970’s & 1980’s).
The Company is continuing to progress its licence applications over prospective areas at Walhalla.