The year has been one of change and redirection. Decisive progress has been made in transferring the Group into a focussed GPR technology and service based organisation. As previously reported, it has been a difficult trading year culminating in consolidated operating losses of £831,000, very much in line with expectation; this includes the consolidation of the Group’s South of England operations into Alton with the closure of our R&D premises at Church Crookham and the liquidation of Emrad Limited, together with the reduced headcount this is providing cost savings of £500,000 p.a.

The Group now comprises four principal business opportunities:

1. Adien - in July 2002 the Group acquired Adien Limited, a high quality, unique service based on the PipeHawk radar system providing a high level mapping service. At the planning stage this largely eliminates the need to instruct contractors to dig holes in the nation’s highways. We invested in Adien’s people, premises and technology, and it has doubled its turnover in the year. It has recently worked on major contracts in Edinburgh and Sheffield and has just signed up an exclusive framework agreement with United Utilities. Adien is now profitable in its own right and has significant growth prospects.

2. SUMO – provides an instant mark out service, designed to enable contractors to avoid accidental damage to electric cables, fibre optic cables, gas mains, water mains and other underground hazards. In October last year we successfully launched SUMO as a franchise business at the NEC Franchise Exhibition. This was followed up by the buyout of one of the original three partners to the joint venture. Since then the implementation of the franchise operation has been undertaken in a controlled and targeted manner. From the end of this month there will be five franchisees in addition to the inhouse operation, and these, with the planned nationwide roll out of the service, are hoped to add substantially to the Group results.

3. Handheld Pipe Locator - our technology team have completed the first two phases of this tool, having successfully field tested two concept demonstrators with our financial and user partners, NEGAS (formerly NYGAS), in the USA. The next phase is to refine and make the demonstrator lighter and even more operator friendly; we are currently negotiating this with NEGAS. We anticipate progressing discussions for a licensing, manufacturing and marketing arrangement with a commercial partner during the current financial year to achieve production of the first low cost GPR product with significant volume sales potential.

4. Mine Detection – the EU/LOTUS landmine project successfully completed the final field trials in Bosnia and we believe is the only vehicle mounted land mine detection system which successfully combines three different technologies (GPR , infra-red and metal detection) in real time to detect anti-personnel mines with minimal false alarm rate. It is pleasing to note that a few of the 125 countries, which have signed up to the Ottawa Convention requiring disposal of all their land mines by 2009, are showing some interest in developing commercially our system.

Two Directors left us during the year, David Mahony and Mike Bushell. I would like to thank them for their contribution to the group and wish them well for the future.

The key to our group is our staff. I would like to thank them all for standing with us and enjoying the challenges of the past year. I look forward to the future with considerable confidence as health & safety issues, transport priorities and local and international legislation will increasingly work to our benefit.