Serabi received an average US$1,287/oz for gold sold in the March quarter.

It posted production of 9,527oz in the June quarter, mining 44,784 tonnes at an average 6.72 grams per tonne.

Serabi also expects to finish a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of Coringa in the south-eastern part of the Tapajos gold district by the end of this month. It announced earlier this year updated resource estimates for Coringa of 845,000t at 7.95gpt (216,000oz) indicated and 1.43 million tonnes at 6.46gpt for 298,000oz inferred.

"Concurrent with the PEA, we are working hard on the permitting of the Coringa project," said Serabi CEO Mike Hodgson.

"The plan to replace a conventional tailings dam with installing a filtration plant allowing for the dry stacking of tails has been well received by the state environmental agency, SEMAS, who had already approved the original environmental impact assessment on the basis of a conventional dam.

"We are now completing an amendment to the EIA to reflect this design variation. We expect SEMAS to approve the amendment and can then proceed with the necessary public hearings. We hope to be in a position to receive the preliminary licence during the second half of the year."

Hodgson said June quarter mining rates and plant throughput improved slightly on the first quarter.

"Being a plant constrained operation, we have focused on optimising planned maintenance to improve plant availability, and we hope we will see continuing improvement during the second half of the year," he said.

"The plant has processed over 87,000 tonnes of hard rock ore year to date, a 7% improvement on the mid-year position in 2018. After a slow start during the first quarter, the treatment of flotation tailings with the newly commissioned trommel (scrubber) has increased and in the last two months have been processing approximately 3,000 tonnes per month at very good grades of approximately 4gpt, making this material very viable indeed.

"With a considerable stock of this tailings material, we expect to continue processing these stockpiles to supplement gold production from mined ore during the remainder of 2019.

"In the longer term we expect plant production will be further enhanced with the installation of an ore sorter, which I am pleased to report has arrived at site. The associated infrastructure is in construction, and we will commission the unit during the second half of the year. Whilst we are not forecasting production benefits from the ore sorter in 2019, we do expect a significant impact in 2020."