Eastern purchased Cascade on the west coast of New Zealand’s south island for $NZ3.5 million in April this year. The Cascade buy moved Eastern from explorer to producer, if only on a relatively small scale.

At the time of the purchase, Eastern chief Paul Williams said Cascade’s proximity to Eastern's existing Whareatea exploration permit made the activities at Cascade over the next 2-3 years an ideal lead-in to the future development of the significantly larger coal resource at Whareatea.

Eastern has continued its negotiations with potential export customers for the Cascade product with the intention of significantly increasing the revenue flows to the Cascade operations during the course of 2006.

Eastern’s major coal interest in Australia is the Broughton project, south of Hail Creek in the northern Bowen Basin in Queensland. Work on a feasibility study for the Broughton project is underway and scheduled for completion in June 2006.