Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s chemicals group INEOS is mothballing three production units at Saltend Chemicals Park in Hull, blaming high UK gas prices and tougher competition from producers in the United States and China.
Two of the plants have already stopped. The third is due to go offline within days. The company said the units are Europe’s last remaining world-scale acetyls plants and make intermediates used in pharmaceuticals, clothing, cosmetics, detergents, construction materials, and military explosives.
Ineos employs about 245 people directly at the sites. Reporting based on company briefings puts the number of staff at Saltend Chemicals Park at around 1,000, with the plants supporting close to 4,000 jobs when the wider Humberside supply chain is included. An Ineos spokesman told the Evening Standard that no redundancies are planned and that Ineos staff will stay on while the plants are idled.
What the Hull units make, and why gas matters
The three units produce acetic acid, acetic anhydride, and ethyl acetate. Those chemicals feed everyday products (paint, glue, solvents, textiles, food preservation) and higher-spec uses such as aspirin and explosives. The plants use natural gas both as fuel and as a feedstock, so the wholesale gas price hits the cost of every tonne twice.
Ineos said repeated investment has left the Hull units among the most efficient of their kind, with a carbon footprint it puts at half that of comparable U.S. output and one-eighth that of Chinese material. Those carbon figures come from the company. They have not been independently verified in the reporting around this announcement.
In the company statement, Ratcliffe said the group was being forced to idle some of Europe’s most efficient plants and that it “just cannot compete.” He blamed high gas prices and carbon taxes, and said replacement imports from the United States and China would raise global emissions. UK outlets also reported him describing government energy policy as economic vandalism on an industrial scale.
How the 12-times claim lines up with the market
Ineos said European gas is now 12 times U.S. levels and eight times the cost of coal-based Chinese production. Reuters, citing LSEG and ICE data on September 22, put the UK front-month contract at about $23.51 per million British thermal units, against $2.84/MMBtu at the U.S. Henry Hub. That ratio is about 8.3 times, not 12. The gap may reflect the contract, the day, or a delivered industrial price rather than the exchange benchmark. The direction of the comparison is not in dispute: UK gas is several times U.S. gas.
UK wholesale prices have roughly doubled since July and recently reached their highest level since December 2022. The Daily Telegraph put last week’s peak near 198p per therm, with Tuesday trade around 173p as markets reacted to talk of a U.S.-Iran ceasefire. Multiple outlets tie the summer spike to the U.S.-Israel war in Iran and disruption through the Strait of Hormuz. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine remains the longer backdrop for Europe’s loss of cheap pipeline gas.
Ministers call it a commercial decision
A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said the halt was “a commercial decision from Ineos” and a concerning time for Saltend workers and their families. The department pointed to £350 million of co-investment support for strategically important chemicals producers, trade measures on foreign chemical imports, and two electricity-cost schemes (Supercharger and the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme).
Ineos is asking UK and EU governments for tariff protection against Chinese chemicals, the BBC reported. The same report said the group is trying to buy U.S. liquefied natural gas directly, a process that could take up to a year, or will wait for prices to fall. That LNG timeline is attributed to the BBC’s understanding of the company’s plans, not to the Ineos statement.
The Hull halt sits in a longer rundown of UK chemicals capacity. The Chemical Industries Association told the Guardian in March 2026 that sector output had fallen about 60 percent since 2021, with at least 25 site closures. Ineos itself shut synthetic ethanol at Grangemouth and received a government support package for the remaining chemicals complex there in December 2025.
What happens at Saltend from here
The mothball is temporary on paper. Ineos has not set a restart date. Permanent closure, the company has warned, would hit Humberside jobs hard. Near-term markers are the shutdown of the third unit in the coming days, any progress on a U.S. LNG supply deal, the path of NBP and TTF prices if Hormuz flows resume, and whether London or Brussels adds the import tariffs Ineos wants.
Ratcliffe, a Monaco tax resident and co-owner of Manchester United, told the BBC last week that he had lost confidence in Britain. The Hull decision is the first industrial move to follow that interview.
