UK chemical manufacturing facing ‘extinction’, says Ineos boss Ratcliffe
UK chemical manufacturing facing ‘extinction’, says Ineos boss Ratcliffe
Share:
Chemical manufacturing in the UK is facing “extinction”, Ineos boss Sir Jim Ratcliffe has said, with the billionaire businessman warning that the sector is having the “life squeezed out of it”. He spoke after the company last week closed the last remaining, synthetic ethanol plant in the UK.
The Ineos chairman said: “We are witnessing the extinction of one of our major industries as chemical manufacture has the life squeezed out of it.”. While Ineos stressed all employees at the ethanol plant are to be be redeployed across the chemicals business at Grangemouth, it added there would still be a net job loss of 80 roles at Grangemouth, with more than 500 jobs impacted indirectly across the wider economy.
De-industrialising Britain achieves nothing for the environment. It merely shifts production and emissions elsewhere. The closure comes after Petroineos, which was established as a joint venture between PetroChina and Ineos, last year confirmed plans to shut its Grangemouth oil refinery in the second quarter of 2025, with the loss of 400 jobs.
Ineos had been manufacturing synthetic ethanol – which is predominantly used by the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors – at Grangemouth for more than four decades. Ethanol is essential for the manufacture of many pharmaceutical drugs, but the Grangemouth plant was one of only two in Europe.
It had the capacity to produce 226 million litres per year – the equivalent to filling 90 Olympic-size swimming pools – but Ineos said the the UK chemicals industry, like other energy intensive industries, was struggling to be competitive in the global market.
