The company, which acquired the New Vale Opencast mine in December last year, increased its total production by the smallest margin - from 4.64 million tonnes in 2006 to 4.6Mt in 2007 - citing environmental complications as hampering results.

Five coking coal shipments from the company's Stockton Opencast mine were cancelled in May and June this year after ongoing protests at the site and efforts to collect and relocate species of native land snails.

This contributed to a drop in exports of 11% on the previous year to 2.19Mt and resulted in expenditure of more than $1 million on providing security for company personnel and at the site in a bid to control the protests.

Counteracting the losses was the decision to resume mining at the Spring Creek operation and the sale of a 49% stake in the mine for $24 million.

Solid Energy chairman and CEO Don Elder said the company's financial position is strong and the future focus remains on investing in new coal technologies to increase mining opportunities.

"Increasingly these will involve new technologies both for end use by the consumer, and for the production of energy from coal reserves that are too deep to mine with traditional mining techniques," Elder said.

"These include coal seam gas which we are trialling in the Waikato, coal gasification both above and underground, and the capture and underground sequestration of CO2.

"These are all initiatives that we are piloting in New Zealand as part of our $100 million commitment, over 20 years, in research and development into applying clean coal technologies to New Zealand conditions, new ways of using coal and alternative energy sources."