Announcement • Aug 13

Rua Gold Inc. Receives Fast-Track Designation for Auld Creek Gold-Antimony Project and Drill Approval for Glamorgan Project

RUA GOLD Inc. received Fast-Track designation for its Auld Creek Gold-Antimony Project in the Reefton Goldfield, confirming national significance and triggering a six-month expert panel permitting review, and received all required regulatory approvals to commence exploration drilling at its Glamorgan Project in the Hauraki district, where two years of surface work have defined three priority targets in one of New Zealand's most productive gold belts. A Pre-Feasibility Study for Auld Creek is advancing toward a Fourth Quarter 2026 completion, with 800 community and stakeholder engagements documented and the full technical study package being assembled for the substantive Fast-Track application. The Fast-Track designation for Auld Creek, announced July 30, 2026, and the Glamorgan drill approval, announced August 4, 2026, arrived within six days of each other. The Fast-Track designation means the New Zealand Government has formally recognized Auld Creek as a project of national significance. Under the Fast-Track Approvals Act, this replaces a fragmented multi-statute approvals process with a single six-month expert panel review, with a single submission and a single determination. The process is not guaranteed to result in permit approval, but it provides a defined timeline that can be planned around. RUA GOLD has spent the better part of two years preparing for this moment. Over 800 engagements with community members, stakeholders, and regulators. Environmental, geotechnical, hydrological, and socio-economic studies either completed or well advanced. A team of specialist consultants retained across every technical discipline required. The company was ready before the designation arrived. The Glamorgan drill approval is a different kind of milestone. Where Fast-Track is a permitting event, the Glamorgan approval is an exploration event -- specifically, the first opportunity to test a geological hypothesis that two years of systematic surface work has built into a compelling and multi-evidenced case. Three priority targets have been defined, supported by coincident UAV magnetic geophysical anomalies, gold-arsenic soil sampling across four major anomaly zones each trending approximately four kilometres in length, CSAMT resistivity features, and TerraSpec clay mineral analysis confirming the silica and alteration assemblages of a productive epithermal system. The targets sit approximately three kilometres northwest of OceanaGold's Wharekirauponga deposit. The drill bit has never tested this system. The Auld Creek Gold-Antimony Project is not a new story in New Zealand's mining calendar. The Reefton Goldfield produced over two million ounces of gold historically at grades between nine and fifty grams per tonne. Auld Creek is the most advanced effort to unlock the modern potential of that endowment, and it carries a dual-metal profile that makes it unusual among current gold developments globally: high-grade gold alongside antimony, a critical mineral formally designated as strategically important by both the United States and Canadian governments and now the subject of export controls by China that have driven Western demand for non-Chinese supply to levels not seen in decades. The Preliminary Economic Assessment completed in early 2026 outlined a pre-tax IRR of 69% and a pre-tax NPV of USD 979 million at a base-case gold price of USD 3,200 per ounce. At spot-price assumptions at the time of the study, the pre-tax IRR reached 109% and the pre-tax NPV exceeded USD 2,100 million. The PFS underway from Mining One and Pitch Black will provide a more rigorous economic picture, incorporating a resource base that has grown since the drill program began, geotechnical and hydrogeological data collected during the infill program, and metallurgical test results from the bulk sample program. The practical significance of Fast-Track designation extends beyond the permitting timeline. Financing decisions, equipment procurement, staffing plans, and community commitments can all be structured with greater confidence when the permitting process has a defined endpoint. Contractors and technical partners can be engaged in anticipation of a positive determination rather than held at arm's length. And investors who have applied discount rates to the project for permitting uncertainty can begin to model scenarios with a confidence that was not available before July 30, 2026. RUA GOLD received a drone concession for the Glamorgan Project in May 2024 and approval for minimum-impact exploration in July 2024. It deployed a Geometrics MagArrow magnetometer under a DJI M300 drone and flew approximately 590 line kilometres of UAV magnetic survey, identifying two areas of strong demagnetization interpreted as the alteration footprint of a major epithermal system. Soil sampling across 3,181 samples defined four major gold-arsenic anomalies designated A through D. Anomaly A trends north-northwest for approximately 4.2 kilometres, directly consistent with the structural orientation of the Wharekirauponga deposit. CSAMT resistivity surveys identified deep-rooted resistive features beneath the surface anomalies. TerraSpec analysis confirmed silica-flooding and chalcedony at surface. Every independent line of evidence pointed to the same targets. Three of them are now being drilled for the first time. The value of the six-day catalyst period lies not in either milestone individually but in what they reveal about RUA GOLD's portfolio architecture. The company has deliberately built a structure in which two assets -- Auld Creek on the South Island and Glamorgan on the North Island -- are advancing on different but complementary timelines, providing investors with multiple independent catalysts and reducing the binary risk of a single-asset development story.

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