Ineos Said to be Restarting Grangemouth crackers

Ineos is said to be in the process of restarting its gas-fed cracker at Grangemouth, Scotland. All facilities at the site were put on "cold standby" on October 15 at the height of the dispute with the trade union Unite. The naphtha cracker and the butadiene extraction unit are believed due to restart shortly afterward.

Ineos has not provided any information about a restart of the plastics units. Earlier, however, executives said it could take three weeks for all plants to be back on stream. Altogether, Grangemouth can turn out around 1 million t of ethylene and 400,000 t of propylene annually. The site's LLDPE plant can produce 330,000 t and the PP plant 285,000 t of polymer.

The Swiss-based group said that Unite member Stephen Deans resigned at the end of October prior to a disciplinary hearing. Although tension had been mounting for some time, the conflict between the union and management over Deans' alleged political organizing for a Labour party candidate was the catalyst  the crisis that nearly brought the site down.