INEOS - The alchemists: the INEOS story: an industrial giant comes of age

F rankly, I was not sympathetically inclined, a year or so ago, to the proposal to write a book about INEOSs first twenty years. It had undertones of self-indulgence written all over it, it risked being a hostage to fortune, and, if one is at all superstitious, then telling the world publicly how wonderful we have been over two exciting decades has all the hallmarks of the kiss of death!

So, no, I wasnt enthusiastic. Nor were John and Andy, my two colleagues and lifetime friends.

So how come the U-turn? Did vanity ultimately win the day?

Here I struggle a little. We John, Andy and myself have enjoyed a most extraordinary twenty years, which has seen INEOS grow from a small obscure chemical company in Antwerp to, quite frankly, a colossal enterprise today. Now we have chemical plants the size of the City of London. We have over 100 chemical sites worldwide. We have annual sales of $60 billion, comparable to the GDP of a medium-sized country. We produce 50 million tonnes of chemicals and 50 million tonnes of oil and oil products. We own 1 billion barrels of oil still in the ground. We have eight tankers shuttling shale gas from America to Europe. We have a car company, a clothes company and a football club, not to mention my hotel business. Its difficult to keep up sometimes. Last year every single business in INEOS beat its budget. Our safety record is genuinely world-class. Profits hit $7 billion in 2017.

So, is the story worth telling? Who knows? But John, Andy and I were lobbied persistently and, ultimately, we weakly relented.

To accomplish what we have in such a short timeframe requires taking some risk. We have experienced some strong headwinds on our journey (some might say cyclonic is a better description!) and many moments are indelibly seared into memory. All of this will, hopefully, make interesting reading.

There has never been a dull moment. It has been an absorbing time and tremendous fun, in the main. We weathered the crisis in 2008, no thanks to Gordon Brown, but our ship was close to foundering. We stood our ground with the unions in Grangemouth four years ago and, ultimately, saved Grangemouth and many thousands of jobs. Today, Grangemouth is tremendously successful, but it teetered for weeks on the verge of closure. And we brought US shale to Europe, whose stubborn refusal to entertain such a cost-effective energy source threatened the whole European chemical industry when oil was over $100 per barrel. Exciting times. Although I admit it has been exciting in a manufacturing sense. I was born in the heart of industrial revolution territory and I suppose it runs in my blood. I believe we benefit if we actually make some of the goods we buy rather than just sell services. And, just as importantly, much of the northern economy in Britain depends on manufacturing jobs which today are few and far between. Britain has its own rust belt, as America did before its shale revolution resolved a lot of that. Im optimistic we could do the same here.

Its traditional to offer thanks in such a book as this, and INEOS has cause to be grateful to many people who helped it along the way, but we certainly wouldnt be where we are today without John Reece and Andy Currie. Both clever chaps from Cambridge, unlike like my humble red-brick, they share my northern values, hailing from Sunderland and Doncaster grammar schools respectively. We work closely together. We almost always reach a consensus when important decisions come our way and, likewise, they both enjoy good humour. Northern values include hard work, good manners, grit, rigour and an essential sense of humour, with wit as a bonus. Life is short!

My family, I am told, has endured the occasional bout of grumpiness from my direction I am sure only on a microscopic level and exceedingly infrequently but has given much support and helped keep my feet firmly planted on the ground. The family always come first, and we make this message clear throughout INEOS.

I am fortunate in that I can switch off, so family holidays offer a real rest. My father once said that there is little point worrying about things you can do nothing about. It was good advice.

So, for better or worse, here follows the tale of INEOS.

Jim Ratcliffe
April 2018