A ship which was built in 1997 to export forestry products has been named after a village in Fort William.
The vessel which is owned by the Wilson Group has been named The Wilson Corpach in honour of the port it has used for the past 18 years.
BSW Timber, which started exporting woodchips from its Fort William sawmill in the same year, has shipped over 1.5 million tonnes to Scandinavia for paper making.
Richard Scott, logistics manager at BSW Timber, said: “Since we started exporting from our Fort William saw mill, we have shipped over 1.5 million tonnes of woodchips from the port of Corpach, mainly to Scandinavian markets for paper making. There has been over 1,000 cargoes of woodchip since 1997, the equivalent of 63,000 lorry loads.”
To mark the homecoming of the ship, the captain Zolotukhin Evgeny was presented by ClydeBoyd with a bottle of Ben Nevis Malt Whisky which was produced in the local Fort William distillery.
Christine McColl, director of ClydeBoyd, said: “We are delighted that the ship has been named after our port. The port now handles over 300,000 tonnes of forestry products each year including woodchips from BSW’s Fort William sawmill.”
On its return journey The Wilson Corpach will take 2,000 tonnes of BSW Timber’s woodchips to Follafoss in Norway to be made into paper pulp.
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BSW Timber has donated the materials to build a new playground Gazebo for Earlston Primary School.
Apprentices from BSW Timber’s Fort William sawmill have been involved in the construction of a pergola project.
