MOSCOW (MRC) -- INOVYN has announced the proposed closure of its sulphur chemicals plant at Runcorn Site, and its withdrawal from the UK sulphur chemicals market, as per the company's press release.
The decision follows a detailed management review of the business in light of recent unforeseen events.
In October 2020, an unexpected interruption to the third-party power supply to Runcorn Site resulted in the sulphur chemicals plant being taken offline. During a carefully controlled restart, it was identified that a number of critical plant components had suffered significant damage. As a result, to ensure the safety and integrity of the plant it was taken back offline.
Since then, and despite significant effort and investment to rectify these issues, it has become clear that it will not be possible to safely restart the plant for at least a further 18-24 months.
This extended outage affects INOVYN’s ability to supply its customers and means that it will not be in a position to continue to produce sulphur chemicals for the UK chemicals market. Regrettably, the Company is therefore left with no option but to keep the plant offline and effect a permanent closure of the sulphur chemicals business.
There is no impact on other operations at Runcorn Site.
Inovyn’s operations at Runcorn are focused mainly on the production of chlorine, caustic soda, and chlorinated derivatives, according to its website. The site has one of the largest membrane electrolysis units in Europe. Chemicals produced there are sold into a variety of industrial applications across sectors including water, building and construction, electronics, and pharmaceuticals, it says.
As MRC reported earlier, in October 2019, INOVYN conducted maintenance works at its polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant at its Jemeppe Site, Belgium. According to the company’s website, the Jemeppe site is one of the largest PVC production capacities in Europe with 420,000 tons/year of material supplied to key sectors including building, automotive and piping.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's overall PVC production reached 259,400 tonnes in the first three months of 2021, down 3% year on year. All producers reduced their output over the stated period.
Headquartered in London, INOVYN is Europe’s leading producer of vinyls and in the top three worldwide. With an annual turnover of EUR3.1 billion, INOVYN has circa 4,200 employees and manufacturing, sales and marketing operations in 8 countries across Europe.