ESG integral to Pan American growth trajectory: Bergeron

Geology, “battleship assets”, strategic and project execution and of course metal prices have all been integral to Pan American Silver’s significant growth as a corporation since it marked its 25th (silver) anniversary seven years ago. Senior executive Brent Bergeron says the company has also been building a distinctive brand.

Speaking at Pan American’s 2026 investor day in Toronto, Canada, after the release of its latest annual sustainability report, corporate affairs and sustainability senior vice president Bergeron (above) said the company’s elevation into the S&P Dow Jones Best in Class North America Index put it in the top 20% of the largest 600 North American companies based on long-term economic, environmental and social criteria.

“Being ranked now in the top five percentile of the metals and mining industry is really indicative in terms of how we take sustainability at our operations very seriously and try to rate very highly relative to our peers,” he said.

More broadly, Pan American “has maintained a steady trajectory of continuous improvement across the majority of our environmental, social and governance scores and rankings”, the company says in its 2025 sustainability report.

“We feel that our scores are quite well placed right now in terms of the percentiles that we are in,” Bergeron said this week.

“Sustainability at Pan American really starts from the top and it goes through the different levels to the executive team [and] to the country managers and mine general managers to make sure that they are operating at the level we are expecting from them and that we’re actually committed to based on the obligations we have to different [member] organisations across the world.

“In terms of remuneration for our executives 30% of the remuneration is actually based on sustainability factors. It’s one way that we try and really make sure that our team is focused on doing things right going forward.

“Being a member of the Mining Association of Canada, and having our assets here in Canada, we use the Towards Sustainable Mining standard, which is extremely important in terms of our commitment to the mining association here.

“But we took a conscious decision about five or six years ago to not just implement TSM at our Canadian operations but to do it throughout our portfolio ... to make sure that all of our operations are operating at the same standard.

“After the Yamana transaction [2023 acquisition] we continued as a member of the World Gold Council. Therefore we are also implementing the Responsible Gold Mining Principles, which helps us in terms of the breadth of the standard ... and some of the international standards that we also need to adhere to.

“And sustainability doesn’t only happen during the time that we’re operating our mines.

“We also work quite a bit with the corporate development team to really understand the countries and the opportunities that we're going into and make sure that we look at the sustainability aspects of any type of new opportunity or new project before we actually take the decisions, not just on the financial and operational side, even though those are very important.”

Guido Mastropietro, Pan American’s SVP business development said in a seven-year period of transformational M&A and growth for the company, “leveraging our ESG” has become increasingly important.

“We have a really strong reputation in ESG,” he said at the investor day.

“We bring that to the table in every jurisdiction.”