New Gold's exploration of the New Afton deposit has included mapping and sampling the open pit, diamond drilling in and around the Afton pit along with the driving 2,200 meters of underground development from the wall of the open pit.

The 2007 drill program investigated the potential to increase the mineral resources around the known mineralization at the New Afton project. This included drilling around the Hanging Wall Zones and beneath the C Zone to test depths greater than the intersections from the 2006 program. Additional surface and underground diamond drilling was carried out for geotechnical purposes.

The C Zone exploration drilling program was carried out by FORACO Drilling Ltd. of Kamloops, British Columbia. Various core sizes were used ranging from PQ (83 mm diameter), HQ (63 mm diameter), NQ2 (51 mm diameter) and BQTK (41 mm diameter). Four drill holes were completed totalling 3,225 meters and 1,945 samples.

The Hanging Wall Zones exploration drilling program was carried out by Atlas Drilling Ltd., FORACO Drilling Ltd. and Western Exploration Diamond Drilling Ltd. of Kamloops, British Columbia. HQ and NQ2 core sizes were used for this drilling program. The Hanging Wall drilling program totalled 13,149 meters and 5,295 samples in 23 surface holes.

The geotechnical drilling program was carried out by Atlas Drilling Ltd. and Western Exploration Diamond Drilling Ltd. of Kamloops, British Columbia. NQ2 core size was used for the program. The geotechnical program totalled 2,844 meters in 5 underground holes and 4 surface holes.

Between June, 2007 and January, 2008 surface exploration was conducted on the Magnum Option and parts of the Ajax Claim Group (Makaoo-Python and Galaxy properties) which is located approximately 10 kilometers southeast of the New Afton mine site. Work included 44.73 kilometers of line-cutting, a radiometric survey, the collection of 2,040 geochemical soil samples, geological mapping and prospecting, and 6,824 meters of diamond drilling in 15 holes.