Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Positive Prefeasibility Study For Caspiche and Exeter Resource



Unlocking Value for Shareholders

Exeter Resource Corporation is a Canadian public company listed on the TSX and NYSE Amex exchanges. Our focus is the discovery, evaluation and development of gold deposits in the Maricunga district in Chile.

Exeter's 100% owned Caspiche Project in Chile (with a 3% Net Smelter Royalty to Anglo American Chile Limitada) is a gold-copper porphyry system, a type of deposit common to many of the world's largest open pit gold-copper mines. It is located in the prolific Maricunga mineral belt which is currently undergoing massive expansion and investment in mineral projects from some of the worlds largest gold miners. The project is located 15 kilometres (8 miles) south of Kinross Gold's operating Refugio mine (+9 million ounce gold reserve), and 10 kilometres (6 miles) north of the very large Cerro Casale gold-copper deposit (26 million ounce gold reserve), owned by Kinross Gold (25%)and Barrick Gold (75%).

The Pre-feasibilty study used proven and probable mining reserves in the development of the mine plan and financial evaluation (based on measured and indicated resources). Total proven and probable ore reserves, generated from an updated resource estimate for the Super Pit are 1.091 billion tonnes containing 19.3 million ounces gold, 4.62 billion pounds copper, 41.5 million ounces silver. This represents on of the largest mineral endowments for any deposit to be held by a junior explorer. Further its location within a developed mining region within a politically stable country serve to highlight to value of this giant deposit, making it attractive to all medium to large scale producers who desire a stable, low risk metal production stream. A key component of the PFS is the inclusion of high tonnage IPCC systems for the movement of waste rock. This achieves greater efficiencies in the movement of the pit overburden, not only to address rising operating costs for mining waste, but also the capital and operating costs involved in the construction of tailings dam walls using conventional methods. The mine reserves and key mine production characteristics are:

The mine reserves and key mine production characteristics are:

The PFS has considered a conventional concentrator process route for the sulphide ore but includes a roaster to reduce arsenic levels in the final copper concentrate to commercially acceptable levels and also a flotation tailings leach process to maximise gold recovery from the sulphide ore. In parallel with the concentrator a valley fill heapleach will be operated to recover gold from the near surface heap leachable material which is extracted as part of the overall mine development and operation.

Currently The company is fast tracking

Ongoing metallurgical programs designed to improve metal recoveries which if successful would positively impact the project economics,
Detailed geotechnical studies to support the infrastructure placement
Hydrology and hydrogeological studies both at Caspiche and locations with potential to act as viable water sources for the operations

Environmental base line programs to support an eventual EIA
All of which is designed to feed into a full feasibility study for the oxide stand alone portion of the project and a timely update the prefeasibility study on the larger project which is expected to both improve the already robust economics and address critical project development areas.

Financial Summary and Study Highlights:

The project showed robust economics and strong leverage at current gold prices to generate significant revenue with a a pre-tax Net Present Value (5% discount), calculated from the time of commencement of the project, of US$ 2,800 million and average operating costs of US$ 606 per ounce gold equivalent1. The gold production cost drops to US$ 18 per ounce when copper and silver by-product credits are considered.

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