The company completed placement to institutional and sophisticated investors of 8,772,000 fully paid ordinary shares at 68c each.

During April, NEC announced it had upgraded the Elimatta Resource to 222 million tonnes (22Mt indicated, 200Mt inferred) and product quality was confirmed as relatively low ash, high yield, high volatile thermal coal.

NEC is intending to progress technical and commercial evaluation of mine development at Elimatta over the next 12–18 months.

The program will include infill cored hole drilling within EPC 650 to upgrade part of the identified target to resource status; as well as an infill cored hole drilling to increase the confidence level of a substantial portion of the resource to indicated category.

It also plans to commence mining, washing, infrastructure and environmental studies to assess technical and commercial parameters to establish a 5 million tonne per annum opencut mine.

NEC will begin environmental baseline studies and continue negotiations over key infrastructure inputs for the project.

NEC chief Keith Barker said the Surat rail consortium had indicated it was planning to establish rail services to the Wandoan region in 2011 and NEC plans to meet this date with project development.

NEC also holds interests in the Yamala Coal Joint Venture, Maryborough, Ashford and Ashford regional projects.

Major Japanese trading house Sojitz Corporation is farming into Yamala (NEC is currently farming out from 100% to 70%) and funding the exploration program.

Further modelling and exploration at the Maryborough project is planned to progress the evaluation of a small-scale opencut project.

The company also plans to pursue ongoing regional assessment of the Ashford regional project with field mapping and target drilling.

Upon conclusion of the capital raising NEC will have cash resources of about $7.5 million to pursue its objectives.