Major Humber employer INEOS has completed a major £30m investment at its Hull manufacturing site amid moves to slash its carbon emissions.
The Saltend INEOS Acetyls facility is a global producer of acetic acid and the largest manufacturer of its kind in Europe, and recent years have seen the chemicals giant strive to cut its carbon emissions. The firm has been busy converting the facility to run on clean-burning hydrogen instead of natural gas following a multimillion-pound investment, resulting in a 75% cut in its carbon emissions – the equivalent of taking around 160,000 petrol cars off the road.
CEO David Brooks said the investment marks a huge step towards INEOS’ net zero commitment, well ahead of the Government’s UK net zero target year of 2050. He said the business, which employs 500 people worldwide including 300 in Hull, while supporting hundreds more through its supply chain, is the only industrial scale manufacturer of acetic acid, acetic anhydride, and ethyl acetate in Europe.
Its products are essential chemicals used in everyday life, from medicines to clean water. Mr Brooks hailed how the Saltend site now operates with dramatically lower emissions thanks to the switch to hydrogen.
(Image: Stuart Conway for Ineos)
Mr Brooks said: “We’ve put £30 million into Hull to do the right thing – cut emissions, clean up the site, and future proof our operations. We’ve slashed CO₂ by 75%. That’s not a plan. That’s a result.
“Like most chemical businesses in the UK, we are working hard to compete in global markets while facing some of the highest energy and carbon costs in the world. This investment is another step in our plans to supply the UK and European markets with highly reliable and low carbon products.”
The investment will deliver a transformational step change improvement in the site’s product carbon footprint, the firm said.
The hydrogen used at the site is produced as a co-product from existing manufacturing processes, making it a smart, efficient use of resources already on hand – a model INEOS believes can be replicated across the industry. The Hull upgrade is one of several major decarbonisation projects under way across INEOS sites, including Grangemouth and Köln.
Mr Brooks added: “We’re not waiting for 2050. We’re doing it now.”
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