Work has commenced on the building of a new café bar restaurant at the base of the Nevis Range mountain gondola, near Fort William, which will help operators cater better for the diverse demands of its growing customer base - sightseers, skiers and snowboarders, and mountain bikers.

Located at the foot of Aonach Mor the restaurant will replace the existing small coffee shop (the space for which is being used to expand the resort’s ski rental business), now more than 20 years old, and is due be opened in summer 2011 ahead of next year’s ski season. 

Built with laminated wooden beams and faced with local larch the new £390,000 restaurant will have a contemporary feel and command great views of the mountain.  The project will also incorporate a state of the art biomass wood fuel boiler to heat the new building and adjacent offices, helping the Nevis Range to further reduce its carbon foot print.

Veronica adds “it’s great to see the use of Biomass here in the UK.   It is an excellent form of energy and highly applicable to mountain areas that often readily have access to the Biomass – which is essentially waste wood chips – from commercial forestry.   It has been widely used in Austrian resorts and can make an enormous reduction in CO2 emissions”.