ORION™

ORION^™ is Alnitak Resources' platform and strategy for formalizing artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). It brings artisanal and small-scale miners into a formal framework of technical support, safe working practice, training and access to responsible processing, aligned with host-country formalization frameworks.

ORION is not a single project or site. It is a model applied under common technical, environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, with Mintaka ERP^™ as the data and systems platform underneath.

Artisanal and small-scale mining accounts for a meaningful share of global production of several minerals, gold among them. It supports livelihoods that cannot and should not be eliminated.

It is also where many of the worst environmental and social outcomes in mining concentrate: mercury-based amalgamation, child labor, unsafe working conditions, ecosystem damage, and mineral revenues that fail to reach the producing communities and the host nation.

The answer is not prohibition. It is formalization, technical support and access to responsible processing that meets the standards institutional capital and responsible buyers require. ORION is designed to make that formalization work in practice.

The relationship with artisanal and small-scale miners is structured through Technical Support Agreements (TSAs), aligned with host-country formalization frameworks. TSAs are designed to provide training, equipment, financial support and access to mercury-free processing designed to international standards, in exchange for formal supply commitments and adherence to common operational and environmental standards.

Each ORION platform is designed to report through Mintaka ERP, so that chain-of-custody and ESG data are captured from the point of supply through to refined product.

For host nations: formal employment, tax revenue from a previously informal sector, reduced environmental liability from mercury-based processing, and integration of artisanal and small-scale mining into national mineral strategy.

For artisanal and small-scale miners: stable processing relationships, training, equipment, and a pathway out of mercury-based amalgamation, with the income stability that formalization makes possible.

For institutional capital and offtake counterparties: traceable production documented through Mintaka ERP against international ESG standards, for supply chains that exclude mercury-tainted, conflict-affected or untraceable production.