Hunterston Terminal, in North Ayrshire, Scotland, is a coal-handling port located at Fairlie on the Firth of Clyde, and operated by Clydeport.
The port, completed in 1979, was originally called Hunterston Ore Terminal and was intended to handle iron ore for British Steel's Ravenscraig steelworks. Existing facilities on the River Clyde were unsuitable for increasingly large vessels, but Hunterston, with its one-mile long jetty, is able to handle modern ships of any size.
At the port, an overhead conveyor linked to two gantry cranes carries coal to a railhead on the Ayrshire Coast Line railway. Clydeport claim an unloading rate of 2800 tonnes of coal per hour. The conveyor is also linked to a ship loader which loads coal into smaller ships on the inner berth, this coal is transported to Manchester and Belfast amongst other places.
Among other users, coal from Hunterston Terminal supplies Longannet power station in Fife and the Drax power station in Yorkshire. The resulting coal traffic has been a major reason for the planned reopening of the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine rail link.