Strong orbital mixing resulting from local distortions in the crystal field can mix higher energy orbital states with the ground state. We propose to characterise this mixing in CoV3O8 through the measurement of spin-orbit transitions. CoV3O8 is based upon a strongly distorted octahedra around the Co2+ sites and displays a large ordered magnetic moment. This material is currently being investigating as part of our exploratory study of the Cobalt-Vanadium phase diagram for new materials which display stepped magnetisation plateaus at low temperatures.