The US owner of one of Britain’s last major chemical plants has said it will close the site if energy prices remain at their current levels for the next three months.
Peter Huntsman, whose family built the Huntsman Corporation into a global chemicals empire, said the recent spike in gas prices from the Iran conflict was “another nail in the coffin” for European heavy industry.
If today’s economics persist for the next three months, I will close my business. [UK] facility and I will import the product from China or the US,” he said.
The factory in Wilton, on Teesside, employs around 80 people and makes aniline, a chemical used in everything from car seats to aircraft components. It is one of the last surviving plants of the former Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), Britain’s largest manufacturer for much of the 20th century.
“Four years ago, my lowest cost aniline in the whole world came from the UK. So until recently I was competitive,” he said. “Right now, this week, it’s the most expensive.”
The Texas-based Huntsman Corporation was founded by Peter’s father, Jon, a Mormon from Idaho, who died in 2018. He pioneered packaging, developed the now ubiquitous clamshell burger carton and sold it to McDonald’s in 1974 for its Big Macs, then moved into chemicals manufacturing.
Peter became chief executive of the family business in 2000, leading the acquisition of ICI’s industrial chemicals arm for £1.7bn the year before.
His older brother, Jon Jr., is a Republican politician who has served in every US administration from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump’s first term. He was Trump’s ambassador to Russia and Barack Obama’s ambassador to China.
Huntsman Corp has plants across the U.S., Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East – but unlike its U.S. operations, its U.K. and European sites face international gas markets, where prices have hit record highs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“You don’t see it in China, the U.S. or the Middle East, surprisingly, where the war is,” Huntsman said. “You’re seeing it in the EU and the UK, and they’re being hit the hardest.”
The multinational cut about 10 percent of its global workforce last year – about 500 jobs, the largest share in Europe – and closed seven facilities, citing high energy costs.
Huntsman’s warnings are echoed by fellow chemical magnate Jim Ratcliffe, whose Ineos group secured a £120m government bailout in December to save its ethylene cracker at Grangemouth, the last plant of its kind in the UK.
The bailout was an unusual intervention in a sector that has been increasingly hollowed out. According to the Chemical Industries Association, production output has fallen by 60 percent since 2021, with at least 25 site closures since then.
Ratcliffe, who is Britain’s seventh-richest person, has called it “unviable” for chemical plants in Europe because of “rising carbon prices and weak trade defences”.
Huntsman called the problems “self-inflicted”, adding that successive governments had not done enough to reduce industrial energy bills. A failed energy policy has made UK industry less resilient. Such crises should not affect the chemical industry in this way.
“They chose to go down that path, and they’re facing the consequences every day, especially in times like now,” he said. “This [Iran] It’s just another nail in the coffin.”
“We invested more in the UK than in North America. That was a significant step for our company. And today we remain an asset there,” Huntsman said. “I’ve let enough people down in Britain that it’s one of the biggest disappointments of my whole career.”
Over the past decade Britain has lost its last domestic producers of ammonia, a key fertiliser, and sulfuric acid, key to making explosives, raising concerns about self-sufficiency in food production and defense manufacturing.
Huntsman said he was running out of reasons to continue investing in Britain. “I’m doing quite well in China, the US, I’ve got growing operations in the Middle East,” he said. “Why on earth would I put money into Britain, where there is no growth and no policies to encourage people like me?”
A government spokesman said: “We know these are difficult times for our chemicals industry, which is paying the fossil fuel penalty. The best way to deal with this is to clean up our controlled household electricity, to reduce well-billed bills.
“Ministers meet regularly with industry and are working closely with them to understand the impact of the Middle East situation and find possible solutions.”
