Heathrow has announced the names and locations of the 18 shortlisted sites that remain in the running to help deliver the expanded airport.

The sites have been selected from a longlist of 65, all of which were visited during a nationwide tour which concluded in the summer of 2018. The longlisted locations were then all invited to take part in a pre-qualification questionnaire which helped to determine which sites were best placed to be involved in the delivery of Britain's largest infrastructure project.

The final four sites will become offsite construction centres that will help to deliver Britain's new runway bringing jobs and economic opportunities to every corner of the country as Heathrow looks to construct as much of the expanded airport offsite as possible.

In Scotland, four sites are on the shortlist of 18: Babcock Marine Rosyth Limited, Rosyth Dockyard; Forth Ports Limited, Forth Ports Rosyth; Glasgow Prestwick Airport, Ayrshire Logistics Hub; and Peter D Stirling, Mossend International Rail freight Park (MIRP).

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Council Leader Jim Logue said: "This is excellent news for Peter D Stirling and for North Lanarkshire, taking an important step towards the possibility of a logistics hub at Mossend. The site has the location, ability and capacity to deliver all the objectives of the Heathrow expansion project and create a strong, vibrant hub for Scotland.

"The council is developing an ambitious Economic Regeneration Delivery Plan with a £2 billion housing and infrastructure programme, which fully supports the proposals for the hub at Mossend."

In the autumn, the 18 sites shortlisted will now have the opportunity to pitch to the airport's bosses for their chance to become one of the final four construction centres, to be announced early next year, ahead of work starting in 2021. Heathrow will be the first major infrastructure project in the UK to pioneer the large-scale use of Logistics Hubs - aiming to build as much of the project offsite as possible. The hubs will work by pre-assembling components offsite before transporting them in consolidated loads to Heathrow just as they are needed.

This method will boost the project's efficiency and cut emissions by transporting components to site in fewer lorries. Research by WPI Economics revealed that integrating an offsite manufacturing supply chain into a major project has the potential to reduce the overall cost of the project by as much as 25% whilst speeding up delivery by up to 30%.