New record for fish landings in Peterhead
Peterhead Port has set a new record for annual fish landings, with £226 million-worth of catches traded across the quaysides by the end of November.
It beats last year’s total of £220m, itself a record in the modern era, with December not yet done.
Total landings to November 30 by volume stood at just under 190,000 tons.
This was compared with about 163,000t worth £211.6m for the same period in 2022.
Read more in the Press & Journal.
Shetland's SaxaVord Spaceport granted licence for UK's first vertical rocket launch
A site at the northern-most part of the Shetland Islands has become the UK's first licensed spaceport for vertical rocket launches.
SaxaVord Spaceport on the small isle Unst has been granted the licence by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which will allow for its first launches in 2024.
The regulator verified the privately owned spaceport met the safety and environmental requirements for vertical space launches.
Husband and wife Frank and Debbie Strang have owned the former RAF base, which is located on a remote peninsula on Unst, since 2004.
It is licenced for up to 30 launches each year and caters for companies looking to launch satellites into polar, sun-synchronous orbits.
Dyce Marriott hotel closes after 43 years
The Marriott hotel in Dyce has closed after 43 years in business.
A message on the venue’s website states that it has “closed indefinitely” as of this weekend.
The hotel opened as a Holiday Inn in 1980, at a time when more and more accommodation was needed during the oil boom.
But times have changed since then, with the downturn and then the Covid pandemic hammering the local hospitality industry – followed by soaring power costs.
And various rival venues have been built closer to Aberdeen International Airport.
Rolls-Royce in talks to build mini-nukes in Ukraine
Rolls-Royce is in talks with Ukraine’s biggest private power company to build a string of mini nuclear power plants in the country, The Telegraph can reveal.
DTEK, which is part of billionaire businessman Rinat Akhmetov’s industrial group, has held early discussions with Rolls about developing small modular reactors (SMRs) at sites currently operated by coal power stations.
Maxim Timchenko, the company’s chief executive, said he expects nuclear power to form an important part of DTEK’s future portfolio as Ukraine is rebuilt and his country switches away from fossil fuels.
DTEK and Rolls are examining whether up to eight existing coal power station sites, two of them currently in territory occupied by Russia, could eventually be converted to house SMRs in the 2030s.