New Gold is an intermediate gold producer with operating mines in Canada including the New Afton Mine in British Columbia and the Rainy River Mine in Ontario, and in Mexico with the Cerro San Pedro Mine.

New Gold is committed to excellence in sustainability. We consider our ability to make a lasting and positive contribution to our host communities a key driver to achieving a productive and profitable business. At New Gold, we contribute to sustainable development by ensuring we have a detailed understanding of the impacts, and potential impacts, of our activities on communities and the environment. With this understanding we can minimize or prevent these impacts. We apply this risk-based approach throughout the mine life cycle, from early exploration through development and operation, to decommissioning and mine closure.

New Gold believes in positively contributing to the mining industry. As part of this commitment, New Gold is an active member of Business for Social Responsibility, the Mining Association of Canada, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, the Mining Association of Ontario and the Mining Association of British Columbia. We are also committed to the United Nations Global Compact’s principles on human rights, labor standards, the environment and anti-corruption.

New Gold is committed to achieving the highest possible level of performance with regards to safety, environmental protection and sustainable community development. This commitment drives New Gold to seek out those standards, protocols and performance indicators that assist our operations in achieving these goals. As a result, New Gold has adopted or based our Environmental Management Standard, our Community Engagement and Development Management Standard and our Energy and GHG Management Standard on the following standards:

• The International Cyanide Management Code
• ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management
• ISO 50001:2018 Energy Management
• The Mining Association of Canada’s Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative

2013 was the first full year of operation at New Afton and the first year of mandatory TSM reporting. New Afton has now gone through nearly a decade of reporting with TSM and continues to show improvement on the TSM protocols, reporting AAA for Indigenous and Community Relationship, Biodiversity Conservation Management, Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Management, and Tailing Management. New Gold has used TSM as a tool of disclosure to assure the local communities and Indigenous partners that there has been progress and improvement in the areas that are important to them.

While 2022 was the second year that New Afton conducted an internal assessment against the new Water Stewardship Protocol, they are targeting a AAA by the end of 2023. Additionally, verification of the new Climate Change Protocol will occur as well.

In 2014, New Afton was the first mine in North America to be certified under the ISO 50001 Energy Management Standard.  We have met the criteria for AAA across the entire Energy and GHG Management Protocol, but more importantly we have met or exceeded our energy targets for the past 9 years, which leads to dollar savings and lower GHG emissions.  As of the end of 2022, cumulative annual energy savings at New Afton mine have exceeded 15% of its total annual energy consumption. Since the start of the energy management program, New Afton has won 9 awards in recognition of energy and GHG management initiatives, including the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) Energy Management Award of Excellence and a Natural Resource Canada (NRCan) CIPEC Energy Management National Award.

As part of our commitment to being a socially responsible partner of choice, New Gold has adopted TSM at all of our sites, including those in other countries. In 2017, our Cerro San Pedro Mine received a TSM Leadership Award from the Mining Association of Canada for reaching a minimum of Level A across all indicators during external verification. As the site is undergoing a phased closure due to exhaustion of ore, one particularly pleasing aspect of the results was the achievement of AAA across all indicators of the Aboriginal and Community Outreach Protocol. Cerro San Pedro has maintained the good results that it achieved for the last reporting period. Although Cerro San Pedro will report its TSM results externally moving forward, the site will continue to use the TSM protocols to guide activities through the remainder of the closure process.

Rainy River Mine, in Northwestern Ontario is operating and is actively implementing TSM. Rainy River has completed a self-assessment and looks forward to having the results externally verified in 2023. External reporting of the results will commence in 2023.