Booth # 3107

After Doubling Resources, Far West www.farwestmining.com

Moves to Pre-feasibility in Chile
Rick Zimmer
President & CEO
Our next guest had a stellar 2009. His
company’s stock soared from $0.60 per
share to close at $4 per share on consis-
tent good news at its Santo Domingo
project in Chile. Based on the results of a
positive scoping study a while back, this
looks like a deposit destined to become
a mine with a resource of over 400 mil-
lion tonnes of copper, iron and gold ore.
Far West’s President and CEO, Rick Zim-
mer joined us on Resource Intelligence
TV to explain how the company will
move Santo Domingo into production.
and found a good deal of new mineralization. It
essentially doubled the size of the resource.
RI: A double is an outstanding achievement in
drilling, Rick. You just doubled the size of the
resource and now you’ve got a new drill program
starting right away. What do you hope to achieve?
RZ: We are shooting for 14,000 metres roughly
split between 6,000 metres in diamond drill and
8,000 metres in RC drilling. First, the idea is to
do some infill drilling. We have a 100m by 100m
drilling pattern on the deposit. Now we want to
infill drill in there to get some more confidence
in the resource. And number two would be to
capture some additional samples for more metal-
lurgical studies that we will be progressing with
in about six months.
RI: That should push you over 100,000 metres of
drilling in total on the project in just three and
a half years, which is both impressive and costly.
What’s your cash position now?
RZ: We did a private placement late last year with
Quadra Mining to the tune of $10 million, so
we are well funded to carry out this next phase
of work.
RI: What was it specifically about Santo Domingo
that convinced Quadra to get involved?
RZ: I’m sure they were looking at the economics
and the existing infrastructure of the project. The
other factor, of course, was that they have a huge
deposit to the north of us that they are currently
looking to develop as well.
RI: Far West stock has gone from $0.60 to almost
$4.70 in about 14 months. What is the market
reacting to do you think?
RZ: The market is reacting to the size of our pro-
ject and the fact that we’ve doubled our resource,
as well as Quadra’s involvement in advancing
this. Investors are beginning to realize that we’re
604.602.9144
tonnes; and Estrellita is 30 million tonnes. Es-
trellita is not included in our resource statement
because it is more of an oxide deposit, whereas
the other deposits are sulfide deposits.
RI: Santo Domingo is located in Chile, not far
from the coast. How would you describe your
existing infrastructure?
RZ: The deposit is extremely well located. It is
really one of the pearls of undeveloped copper
deposits still out there. We are just outside the
town of Diego de Almagro, a town of roughly
4,000 people. We are located 60 km from the
port to the west, and 60 km to the east is a smelt-
er in a town called El Salvador, which is a feeding
smelter. The elevation is 1,000 metres, which is a
lot lower than many other existing mines of this
kind. We’re also well serviced by the Pan Amer-
ican Highway, which goes right past the property
to the east and west. And the deposit is only 1km
off the paved road.
Additionally, water is very much at a premium in
Chile. I don’t think we will find enough water on
our own property based on studies to this date.
We have two other options though. We could
either buy water rights, which we are currently
negotiating with a number of vendors, or we
would use sea water. We’re only 60 km from the
coast and sea water is acceptable to the mining
process we’re using, so that is a potential solution
as well. In the end, this is simply an economic
decision. The important thing for us was to prove
that we could run the copper flotation using sea
water. Our tests have shown that we can.
RI: You did a scoping study a while back, which

R
esource Intelligence: Let’s talk about Santo
Domingo. You’ve done a lot of drilling al-
ready on this project in Chile. How much
have you accomplished?
Rick Zimmer: We’ve discovered a very large open
pitable deposit in the order of roughly 400 mil-
lion tonnes of ore. We’ve done extensive drill-
ing—upwards of 90,000 metres drilled. We’ve
spent about $28 million exploring this project
already, so we’re in a very good position.
We also did a fair bit of drilling in an area be-
tween two ore zones that we formerly thought
were blank. Based on our previous studies and
geological sections and investigations we were
doing, we thought it would be right to do some
expansion of the resource, so we drilled in there
very serious about our commitment to Santo Do-
mingo. They’re beginning to see what we see: This
is a mine that will bring cash flow to our bottom
line and a lot of upside to our shareholders. At
lower metal prices than today, and even before
we doubled the resources at Santo Domingo, the
economics of the project showed a Net Present
Value of about $500 million.
RI: On the Santo Domingo project you essentially
have three deposits. Which is most important to
the success of the project?
RZ: As you say, Santo Domingo has three dis-
tinct deposits. We call them Santo Domingo,
Iris Norte and Estrellita. Of the deposits, Santo
Domingo is by far the largest. It is roughly 300
million tonnes; Iris Norte is roughly 80 million

12 See page 96 for Disclosure, Disclaimers & Info on Mineral Resource and Reserves

Mining Ltd.
- Continued
helped you value the project based on industry
standards. What did it tell you then, and now
that you’ve doubled that resource, what would a
new scoping study tell you?
RZ: That scoping study was based on our previous
resource calculation and gave Santo Domingo a
NPV of around $500 million. At today’s metal
prices the project probably has an NPV of $2
billion. Once you double the resources you get
an entirely different picture. It’s a project with a
heck of a lot of upside for investors.
RI: What are you looking at in terms of operating
costs based on what you know already?
RZ: Our operating costs will be somewhere around
$10 dollars per tonne. That number is based on
the calculations of an internationally known en-
gineering company.
RI: How big is the entire property?
RZ: Our land package is 200 square km. Of that
we’ll use probably 5% of it for supportable infra-
structure to develop the mine.
RI: So you’ve got 95% of the land holdings still for
exploration. Are you exploring that?
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RZ: We are doing some limited exploration on
the project area at this point, but we are devoting
most of our effort to the program that we have
commenced with the funding from the financing
with Quadra.
RI: How far into the permitting process have you
advanced?
RZ: We have cleared the first stage of permitting,
which in Chile is called a DIA, a kind of initial
environmental study. The next stage is called an
EIA or Environmental Impact Assessment, which
will be required to gain construction permits. To
do that we’ll need about a year’s meteorological
results and the results of our upcoming pre-feas-
ibility study.
RI: How important is mining in Chile?
RZ: As opposed to many places in the world where
mining is often opposed, Chile is copper mining.
That’s what the whole country was built on, and
it is still a major source of the country’s GDP. In
our case we have a local situation which is very
interesting. A mine in the area just 60 km away
is closing down, so there is going to be a lot of
social dislocation going on. We have the popu-
lous actually pushing for us to get going and get
Booth # 3107
www.farwestmining.com
604.602.9144
a mine operating in the area, and that’s absolutely
essential in a permitting situation.
RI: Rick, your management team, directors and
founders hold a significant portion of Far West
Mining, so you’ve got some interest in seeing this
through to production and a cash flow scenario.
How are you going to make that happen?
RZ: We have a game plan and we’re going to stick
to it rigorously. We have adequate funds to ad-
vance Santo Domingo to the next stage and a
team of professionals who have put mines into
production not only recently but also over many
decades. So we have the internal infrastructure to
make it happen.
In terms of exploration activities, we are doing
a drill program now to get some more metallur-
gical results so we can begin a prefeasibility study.
We are going to use that as a springboard to the
next phase of the development of the project.
In order to move beyond the pre-feasibility study
in Chile, which I believe we can complete by
late 2010 or early 2011, we are evaluating all op-
tions, including a financial partner, a joint ven-
ture partnership or an outright sale or merger.
What’s most important to me is to make sure our
shareholders get the best possible return on their
investment.
Milestones:
• Complete 14,000 metre
drill program in March
2010
• Complete metallurgical
test work by July 2010
• Pre-Feasibility study com-
plete by Q4/2010
• EIA complete by Q4/2011
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