News Archive

13 March 2007

Planning application, site acquisition and conveyor construction

ATH Resources plc (AIM:ATH), one of the UK’s largest coal producers, announces that,  as indicated at the preliminary results, it has now submitted an application to East Ayrshire Council for an extension to its Grievehill site to allow approximately 1,000,000 tonnes of coal to be extracted from an area of 25 hectares located adjacent to the existing site.  The coal will be extracted from the same sequence of coal seams that occurs throughout the original site and will be supplied to power generation, industrial and domestic markets.

The extension will operate through the existing infrastructure and site facilities at Garleffan and Grievehill. An extension to the original coaling area at Grievehill allowing the exploitation of a further 370,000 tonnes was approved by East Ayrshire Council in October 2006 and is presently in production.

Acquisition of land at Pinxton

ATH Resources completed the purchase of a 12 acre site, on 7 March 2007, at Pinxton in Derbyshire for consideration of £2.2 million. The site has been acquired to facilitate the recovery of coal from the former colliery spoil tip at Langton. The Langton tip, which is owned by ATH Ogden Limited, is believed to contain some 375,000 tonnes of recoverable coal, subject to obtaining planning permission. The site contains a factory/warehouse of 62,000 square foot and a second warehouse of 12,800 square foot, which will be used to house and manage the plant equipment and to gain access to the Langton tip, with the potential for future redevelopment following the completion of operation.

Conveyor

ATH Resources has completed construction of a 12.2 km conveyor to transport coal from its Glenmuckloch opencast coal site to the company owned Crowbandsgate Rail Facility, near the town of New Cumnock in Ayrshire with the assistance of a £2.2 million grant from the Scottish Executive. The conveyor, operational as of today, is Europe's longest overland conveyor and enables the coal to be transported without travelling on the public road. In total 2.8 million tonnes of coal will be conveyed, removing the need for approximately 54,000 lorry journeys per year, greatly reducing the impact of coal transport on both the environment and road network.

Commenting on all of the above developments, Tom Allchurch, Chief Executive of ATH Resources plc, said: "We are currently seeing exciting and significant developments at ATH. We are working on a number of development projects that will both improve the efficiency of our operations at ATH and will contribute to an increase in Group reserves, year on year. We are also confident that these projects will maximise the long-term benefits of the surrounding environment."