Mining development is under way at the Coringa gold project, about 200 km south of Serabi Gold’s Palito project in Brazil, the dual-listed mining company said on Monday.
The development of the mine portal began in late July to reach the Serra zone, one of three main zones at Coringa. Blasting into hard rock is now under way.
Serabi expects to intersect the Serra orebody in mid-October.
The development of Coringa was a significant milestone for the company, as it aimed to achieve its mid-term objective of becoming a 100 000 oz/y gold producer.
Serabi bought Coringa in December 2017, and since that time, it has built on the bankable feasibility study undertaken by Equinox in 2017, with an enlarged mineral resource supporting a new preliminary economic assessment (PEA) in 2019. The PEA estimates a low initial capital investment of $25-million to build a mine producing an average of 38 000 oz for the first five full years of production of the nine-year mine life at an all-in sustaining cost of $852/oz.
“All studies to date have considered the tried and tested selective mining approach that we have largely used at Palito to date. However, over the past six months we have trialled very controlled long hole open stoping in certain areas of the Palito mine, combined with cable bolting, and the results have been excellent. If we can extend this to Coringa, it could have major benefits, reducing costs and bringing production efficiencies,” said CEO Mike Hodgson.
Coringa has all the indications that it will be like Palito and ore sorting could be a real possibility. The fact we have our own sorter at Palito means we can undertake our own test work and find the optimal settings and processing criteria. Ore sorting has significant benefits as it means rejecting waste before the plant, resulting in a higher grade lower volume feed to the plant, and, as Coringa will have filtration and dry stacking of tailings instead of a tailings dam, reduced levels of tailings,” he added.