Corporate

Company Profile

Incorporated in the UK, Serabi Mining plc is a gold mining company focused on the Tapajos geological region of northern Brazil.  The Tapajos, covering an area of about 100,000 square kilometres, is a major, under-explored mineral province from which artisanal miners (“garimpeiros”) are thought to have extracted up to 30 million ounces of gold from mostly alluvial and surface weathered bedrock deposits since the 1970’s.  

The founders of Serabi commenced operating in Brazil in 1999, with the objective to acquire, evaluate and mine hard rock gold deposits previously unknown or technically too difficult for the garimpeiros to exploit.

Having evaluated several opportunities, the company acquired the Palito Gold Mine in 2001.  Preliminary underground mining and gold production commenced in late 2003 with commercial production achieved in October 2006.  Achieving production of over 100,000 gold equivalent ounces between 2005 and 2008, the Palito Gold Mine remains the only hard rock gold mine to have been established in the region.

During 2008 Serabi experienced significant delays in the delivery of new mining equipment essential to accelerating development of the mine.  As a result mine development fell significantly behind schedule and forecast production levels could not be achieved.  Following an extensive operational review it was determined that the mine needed to be placed into an extended period of development during which time ore production would be limited.  This review coincided with the global economic downturn and without access to capital markets and with cash resources impacted by lower than forecast production during the early part of 2008, the decision was taken, in September 2008, to place the underground mining operations onto care and maintenance from the end of 2008.

The Palito operations have been restructured and currently a much reduced workforce operates a limited open pit mining operation for the exploitation of near surface oxide ore whilst Serabi seeks new funding to progress the development of Palito and its other exploration projects.

Serabi has a land holding of 158,000 hectares but will focus efforts in the near term on evaluating a large number of geophysical anomalies located within 10 kilometres of Palito, which it considers have strong potential to host similar ore-bodies to that at Palito.  Discovery of additional ore-bodies would allow Serabi to increase the reserve and resource base of the Palito project and through the development of a series of satellite deposits create a mining opportunity with a significantly increased production base.