Errol Smart
CEO: Orion Minerals
‘I know I keep hammering on about a minerals cadastre, but it’s a way to measure – and when you can measure you can manage’
IN South Africa’s Northern Cape province, Errol Smart’s Orion Minerals is on the hunt for a red metal familiar to all in mining: copper. But the firm’s projects in the province – once described by Smart as “a dripping roast” – also include zinc, nickel, cobalt, platinum group elements, gold, silver, tungsten, rare earth elements, and lithium.
Blessed with fortitude, a very necessary quality in a mineral explorer, Smart has shown admirable faith in the firm’s brownfields Prieska Copper Zinc Mine (PCZM). It took years of scope redrafts and refinements before starting to raise finance, some of which includes South Africa’s state-owned Industrial Development Corporation. In addition to the technical rigours getting PCZM in financeable format, Smart has also long contended with government incompetence.
A new mining cadastre, promised by the department of mineral resources this year, will coincide with a bankable study for PCZM and further progress on Okiep Copper Project (OCP), another of Orion’s brownfields targets in the Northern Cape. Former South32 and Rio Tinto general manager Nick Fouché and Australia’s LMMS Consultants have been drafted in to optimise PCZM which, in its latest iteration, is targeting an initial 12-year mine producing 22,000 tons of copper metal and 70,000t of zinc metal a year.
A scoping study for OCP indicates pilot phase production of 102,000t of copper in saleable concentrates annually. Smart has also flown the flag for the country’s junior mining sector, calling on the state to make life easier for a sector without which there is no future for local mining.
LIFE OF ERROL
A geologist by training, the affable Smart has exploration in his blood as he taps promising veins in the Northern Cape. A fixture of panel discussions at mining conferences, he flies the flag for junior miners and explorers in South Africa, sectors that he is passionate about. His experience is extensive: he previously held positions at AngloGold Ashanti, Cluff Mineral Resources, Metallon Corporation, Clarity Minerals, LionGold Corp and African Stellar Holdings.
