The Railway came to Fort William in 1890 and as in all other places around the world it attracted people.

In 1929 The British Aluminium Company Ltd completed their major hydro construction programme of dams and pipework to carry millions of litres of water to their new aluminium smelters at Fort William and Kinlochleven. Hundreds of men came from all over to work and labour on the project and others became the first employees of the company. Earlier, in 1907, the Kinlochleven plant was commissioned.

The villages of Inverlochy and Kinlochleven were built specifically to provide housing for the workers and their families and Kinlochleven was the first village in Scotland to be provided with electricity as a result of the hydro-generating station.

Today, after much modernisation and the development of specialised equipment, skills and processes, we are part of a global company called Alcan Inc, which has its headquarters in Canada.

Rainfall for Power
Loch Treig, which you can see from the West Highland Railway Line, north and east of Spean Bridge, is the main source of water. Water is taken from the loch along a 24Km long pipe, which is 4.5m in diameter. Along the way to Fort William additional water is collected from the surrounding hills and introduced to the pipe. The familiar pipes descending from the shoulder of Ben Nevis are the last section of the waterway. This produces a fantastic volume and power of water and gravity drives it into our DC generating turbines.

The Process
Alumina is brought to Fort William by train after being processed, from bauxite in Ireland. We use the electricity to operate the 80 electrolytic cells in our two Cellrooms. The molten aluminium is siphoned from the cells at regular intervals, transported to our Cast Shop, then cast into large ingots which, when cooled, are loaded onto lorries or trains and sent for further for processing into foil, car parts and lots of other useful aluminium products.