Serabi Gold, a London-based, Brazil-focused gold-mining company, said it plans to accelerate a strategy of utilising selective mining techniques as work gets underway at its Coringa gold mine in north-central Brazil.

The company reported today that blasting into hard rock is now well underway at Coringa, noting that there is a "strong potential" for success of selective mining techniques at the project which has had positive results at its Sao Chico and Palito projects.

The company said the start-up of mining development at Coringa is an important milestone in its objective to become a 100,000-ounce per year gold producer, and that the site is a "strategically important asset" that will double its overall gold production output.

Selective mining, or ore sorting, is a method designed to specifically extract high-grade ore that will provide the best return at the processing stage, leaving low-grade ore behind.

At Sao Chico and Palito the company has used a long-hole open stoping method.

Serabi Gold said it will use the project at Coringa to further assess the applicability of selective mining technologies.

Mike Hodgson, CEO of Serabi Gold, claimed selective mining tests have produced "excellent" results and that extending them to Coringa could cut costs and increase efficiency.

"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," Hodgson explained.

Coringa hosts an indicated mineral resource of 195,000 ounces of gold with an average grade of 8.4 grammes per tonne. The company plans average annual production of 38,000 oz/yr for the first 5 full years of production of the 9-year mine life at an average grade of 8.34g/t Au.