INEOS Group 

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LONDON Section 40 (2)
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United Kingdom
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Rt Hon Greg Clark MP

Secretary of State

Department of Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy
1 Victoria Street

LONDON

SW1 OET

 

10th October 2018

Seal Sands Acrylonitrile Plant

Dear Greg

I am writing to share a serious issue that we have with our Acrylonitrile plant at Seal
Sands, near Middlesbrough. As you will know, acrylonitrile is a key building block in
the development of carbon fibre and our plant on Teesside is the only facility and
one of only three in Europe. It was constructed in the early 1970?s and directly
employs 350 people with total dependent employment in the local area amounting to
over 2000 jobs.

We now face a crisis. The plant is just about cash breakeven but we are now facing
a hugely challenging investment in new technology to comply with EU environmental
legislation namely the Waste Incineration Directive (by June 2020) and the Waste
Water Emission Directive (by November 2021). The cost of such compliance
amounts to almost ?100m which we cannot justify on a plant that is making no money.
In order to meet the deadlines, we would need to approve this expenditure early in
2019 and we can see no financial justification for this.

As things stand, the decision in the new year will be to close the plant. I wanted to let
you know this well in advance to avoid surprises and also to test with you whether
there are any mechanisms that we could employ to defer compliance with the
regulations. This would protect employment for the foreseeable future and avoid a
potentially damaging closure on Teesside.

In addition to the loss of the 2000 jobs that depend on the site today, there are
potential issues created both upstream and of Seal Sands.

    

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The frustrating thing about all of this is that the environmental impact of our current
operation is actually very low. In terms of air quality, the highest measured level of
at site level is just 3.2 pg.m3 compared to a background level in Middlesbrough
of 26.1 pg.m3 and an Environmental benchmark of 30 pg.m3. For 802, the site level
measure is 1.4 pg.m3 compared to Middlesbrough at 4.4 pg.m3 and an
Environmental Benchmark of 20 pg.m3.

If the plant closes then the imports into the UK that backfill the missing values will
almost certainly have a worse environmental footprint than the existing supply chain.
We have the crazy position of closing a UK asset and losing jobs in order to
implement the Waste Incineration Directive to protect the environment when the long
term impact will not only damage the UK economy but also the global environment.

I?m happy to meet up to discuss this further and thanks for your ongoing support and
interest in our activities.

Yours sincerely

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Tom Crotty
Director, INEOS Group

ineoscom
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Emailed: @beis.gov.uk enquiries@beis.gov.uk
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