JUNE 2005

UK Coal Company Doubles Reserves

AIM listed, ATH Resources plc, the UK’s third largest coal producer, operates opencast coal mines in the UK with two operational sites, the 600,000 tpa Skares Road and the 1,000,000 tpa Garleffan, both near New Cumnock, East Ayrshire in Scotland

Despite, coal extraction being hampered by flooding over Christmas and new year,  substantial increases in  the price of gas oil and poor plant availability, ATH achieved a turnover of £17.1 million on sales of 638,000 tonnes in the six months to 3 April 2005.

The majority of the coal is used in power generation and is transported by rail either from ATH’s rail loading facility at New Cumnock or via third party railheads. A significant proportion of coal is also processed for sale to the industrial and domestic markets making the Group one of the largest producers of house coal in Britain.

ATH Resources also has a number of other coal mining projects in Scotland and two in France, which are at different stages of development. The French subsidiary, Société des Ressources Minieres du Massif Central SA, (SRMMC), is in the process of acquiring two coal concessions in France, which the company plans to develop into opencast mines.

The Group continues to pursue a number of development prospects which will lead to the submission of further planning applications during the coming six months.

In line with this strategy ATH has applied for an extension to the Skares Road site and a new site at Laigh Glenmuir, gained consent for an extension to the Garleffan site and concluded the purchase of the Grievehill and Glenmuckloch sites from Scottish Coal.

In France drilling has been undertaken at Commentry and will shortly commence at Bertholene in order to assess quality and design parameters of the sites.  The development of these sites is being progressed through the planning system with an environmental assessment due to commence shortly at Commentry.

In addition, ATH has place a significant order for new dump-trucks, which will ensure that ATH operates a modern and cost efficient plant fleet.

With these developments, the permitted reserve base of the Group has increased from 2.4 million tonnes as at 26 September 2004 to 6.6 million tonnes today. ATH believes that, in all, current projects could yield over 11.5 million tonnes of coal.