At present, most British ports forward cargoes by road
Orkney Islands
The Orkney Islands Harbour Authority operates 29 piers and harbours across the Orkney Islands. Some of the smaller harbours operated by Authority provide local inter-island ferry services. 3.5 million tonnes of port freight left Orkney in 2018. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, though, travel by Pentland Ferries is currently restricted to freight – food, fuel or animal feed suppliers only.
Orkney Harbour Authority is committed to supporting the transition from fossil fuels to lower carbon and eventually carbon-free alternatives – this is a strategic priority, addressing climate change targets.
Orkney Islands Masterplan March 2020
Aberdeen Harbour
The Serco Northlink Ferry (SNF) Service to Orkney and Shetland operates up to 7 passenger and vehicle sailings a week from Aberdeen, the principal commercial port serving the north east of Scotland and one of Europe’s leading marine support centres for offshore energy. SNF freight vessels to several islands also operate from Aberdeen and currently there are daily sailings during peak months to service Kirkwall and Lerwick’s livestock transportation needs.
Loch Ryan Port in Cairnryan, sometimes still referred to as Port Cairnryan
Stena Line’s purpose built port has two ferry terminals at the north and south of the village of Cairnryan which, combined, represent the third busiest port in the UK, carrying passengers and goods between Scotland and Northern Ireland and further afield. It is a ro-ro port (roll-on/roll-off), receiving ships designed to carry vehicles driven on and off the ship on their own wheels or using a platform vehicle, in contrast to lift-on/lift-off (lolo) vessels, which use a crane to load and unload cargo.
Around 400,000 freight units are carried to Ireland each year. There are 13 daily crossings in each direction on this corridor providing an almost ‘turn up and go’ service. Trade with the continent is in high-value or time-sensitive goods like livestock, fresh seafood, medicines and other time-critical or temperature-controlled goods.
Clyde Ports
Clydeport has extensive experience in handling as containers, forest products, bulk agricultural products, coal and forest products. It connects Scotland’s export markets with deep-sea services out of Liverpool and the English Channel ports as well as handling inbound containers for Scotland’s central belt. also operate Scotland’s busiest cruise terminal.
Forth Ports
Forth Ports (Peel Ports Group) owns and operates seven commercial ports on the Firth of Forth, and the Firth of Tay. A large proportion of Scottish produced goods goes through the River Forth and the River Tay, including oil and gas, food and drink, agriculture, manufacturing and renewable energy goods. It has 25,000 sq m of modern warehousing and has maintenance and repair and upgrading facilities.
10 of 21 services listed
Glensanda
The Port of Glensanda, situated on the western shore of Loch Linnhe on the Morvern Peninsula, is operated by Aggregate Industries UK Ltd. Glensanda is a key granite quarry in the east of Scotland and so the high outward tonnage for the port is mainly due to the constant granite output. Since road vehicles are unable to access the remote quarry, the port was established exclusively to ship out granite aggregates from the adjacent quarry. Since the port opened in 1986, there have been in excess of 5,500 shipments from the port to construction projects throughout Europe. It handled roughly 5.9 million metric tons of granite aggregates in 2018.
Where geographically possible British ports should forward cargoes by inland waterways, when necessary transferring to ‘last mile delivery’ by road.
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Primary source: News from Transporting Scotland’s Trade 2019 Edition. (updated)
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Inland Waterway Freight 
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