Hunterston Terminal

Hunterston Terminal, in North Ayrshire, Scotland, is a coal-handling port on the Firth of Clyde, operated by Clydeport. North Ayrshire (Sìorrachd Inbhir Air a Tuath in Gaelic) is one of 32 unitary council areas in Scotland. ... Map of the Firth of Clyde and area The Firth of Clyde forms a large area of coastal water, sheltered from the Atlantic ocean by the Kintyre peninsula which encloses the outer firth in Argyll and Ayrshire, Scotland. ...

The port, completed in 1979, was originally called Hunterston Ore Terminal and was intended to handle iron ore for the British Steel plant at Ravenscraig. Existing facilities on the River Clyde were unsuitable for increasingly large vessels, but Hunsterston, with its one-mile long jetty, is able to handle modern ships of any size. This heap of iron ore pellets will be used in steel production. ... British Steel is a large British steel producer, privatised in 1988 under the Thatcher government. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... The River Clyde, looking eastwards upstream, as it passes beneath the Kingston Bridge in Central Glasgow. ...

At the port, an overhead conveyer carries coal to a loading point on the Ayrshire Coast Line railway. Clydeport claim an unloading rate of 2400 tonnes of coal per hour. The Ayrshire Coast Line is one of the lines within the Strathclyde suburban rail network in Scotland. ... A tonne or metric ton (symbol t), sometimes referred to as a metric tonne, is a measurement of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. ...

Among other users, coal from Hunterston Terminal supplies Longannet power station in Fife. The resulting coal traffic has been a major reason for the planned reopening of the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine rail link. Longannet Power Station is a large coal-fired power station on the upper Firth of Forth near the Scottish town of Kincardine. ... Under Scottish Executive funding and to relieve congestion on the Forth Railway Bridge the line between Stirling and Alloa is being reopened to passenger traffic. ...

The nearest town is Fairlie.

External links

• Clydeport website

Coordinates: 55°47.00′N, 4°52.75′W Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...