You Now Bid Against Rotterdam for the Same Drum
INEOS mothballed what it calls Europe's last world-scale acetyls units on September 22, and two of the three lines it stopped have no same-owner replacement on this side of the Atlantic. Two thirds of America's acetic anhydride exports already clear through the Netherlands, that lane grew 27 percent before Hull went quiet, and every tonne of it moves on a clock that starts fifteen days before the boat.
INEOS announced the Hull shutdown on September 22 without a restart date.
Two of the three world-scale plants there had already stopped by then. The third was due off within days.
The site is Saltend, 370 acres on the Humber. INEOS's own page for it claims the largest acetic acid, acetic anhydride and ethyl acetate capacity in Europe, across three lines rated 500,000 t/y, 150,000 t/y and 200,000 t/y and run by 340 site personnel.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe gave one reason and put two numbers on it: gas at 12 times the US level, and 8 times what a Chinese coal route pays.
"Which of those three lines has somewhere else to come from?"
What Stopped at Saltend
INEOS used the word mothballed rather than closed, and attached "until further notice" to it. No consultation period, no demolition date, no sale process.
The company puts about 4,000 jobs behind the site including its apprenticeships, and says the material made there carries a carbon footprint 2 times lower than the American equivalent and 8 times lower than the Chinese one.
That last number is the argument, and it is also the tell. A company leading with carbon intensity on the way out is making a case to a government, not scheduling a restart.
So treat the tonnes as gone for the contract year you are negotiating now, and work out which of the three you actually have to replace.
Texas City Covers One of the Three
INEOS has been in the American acetyls market a long time. Its Acetyls in America page claims more than 45 years of supplying acetic acid and acetic anhydride to North and South America, and in 2023 the company bought Eastman's Texas City site to put a plant behind that book.
Eastman's release priced it at $490 million, with $415m in cash at closing and the rest across two anniversaries. Eastman kept the plasticizer business on the site and INEOS runs it for them.
What INEOS bought, in INEOS's own words, was "the 600kt Acetic Acid plant and all associated third party activities."
One plant, one product, and it is the acid (chart below).
Neither American page names an anhydride unit or an ethyl acetate unit anywhere in the United States. The acid that stopped at Hull has a same-owner line in the Gulf 100,000 t/y larger than itself, and the other two lines have nothing published behind them.
The rest of this brief is for subscribers.
The capacity math, the trade-flow read, and what it means for the products you buy.
$50 a month, or $400 a year.
Already a subscriber? Sign in