Ineos Group Limited is a British multinational chemicals company headquartered and registered in London. it is the fourth largest chemical company in the world. Ineos is organised into about 20 standalone business units, each with its own board and operating almost entirely independently, although founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his associates sit on their boards occasionally.
Name
Ineos is derived from INspec Ethylene Oxide and Specialities, a previous name of the business. It also incorporates one Latin and two Greek words. "Ineo" is Latin for a new beginning, "Eos" is the Greek goddess of dawn, and "neos" is Greek for something new and innovative. As well as being an acronym, Ineos states its name represents the "dawn of something new and innovative".
History
In 1992, Inspec was formed by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, previously a director of the U.S. private equity group Advent International, and by John Hollowood, for the purpose of executing a management buy-in of British Petroleum's (BP) chemicals arm.
First acquisitions
In 1995, Inspec bought BP's ethylene oxide, and glycol, businesses for £78 million, to become Inspec Ethylene Oxide Specialities.
In 1998, Ratcliffe, then a director of Inspec, established Ineos for the purpose of purchasing Inspec's ethylene oxide facility in Antwerp, Belgium. The £84 million purchase was funded by three entities: the Scottish investment house Murray Johnstone (£10 million), Ineos management (£1.5 million), and the investment bank BT Alex Brown (£72.5 million, raised through junk bonds).
The company grew quickly through the acquisition of commodity chemical businesses from corporate giants such as BP, ICI and BASF.
Many subsidiaries acquired
There have been three distinct phases of Ineos's growth. The first phase spanned over ten years, with Ineos acquiring 22 companies between 1998 and 2008. The two most notable of these were Innovene, the olefins and derivatives and refining subsidiary of BP, in October 2005 for $9 billion, and ICI's commodity chemicals business in 2001.
The second phase between 2008 and 2010 saw a period of consolidation as the company tackled the impact of the global recession. As production of consumer goods, cars, and construction fell during this period, the company saw sales and earnings fall. During this period a major competitor LyondellBasell filed for bankruptcy. Some predicted a similar fate for Ineos but the company emerged from this period intact.
The third phase commenced in 2011. In this phase the company has continued to grow through a series of strategic joint ventures.
In June 2011, the largest of these, Petroineos, was completed. It is a 50:50 joint venture between Ineos and PetroChina. It combines Ineos's refining interests at Grangemouth, Scotland, and at Lavéra near Martigues, France (about 30 miles west of Marseille), with PetroChina's access to upstream raw materials.
In June 2011, Ineos and BASF combined their styrene businesses to form another 50:50 partnership, Styrolution.
Ineos's growth has continued through this period, expanding production in the US and China. Most recently Ineos announced a joint venture with Solvay bringing together their European polyvinyl chloride businesses.
Ineos's heritage is in a number of well-known blue chip chemical companies. These include Amoco, BASF, Bayer, Borealis, BP, Degussa, Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, Enichem, Erdölchemie, Hoechst AG, ICI, Innovene, Lanxess, Monsanto, Norsk Hydro, Phenolchemie, Rhodia, Sasol, Solvay, Tessenderlo Chemie, UCB, Unilever and Union Carbide. The company was formed in 1998 to implement a management buyout of the former BP petrochemicals assets in Antwerp, Belgium. Since then, it has expanded by purchasing several other businesses. Several of its divisions formerly belonged to BP, and others that have been divested by large companies such as Amoco, BASF, ICI, Dow Chemical, Solvay and UCB, as they have looked to focus more closely on their main product lines. In October 2005 Ineos agreed to purchase Innovene, BP's olefins and derivatives and refining subsidiary, which had an estimated 2005 turnover of US$25 billion, for $9 billion. The deal, which was completed on 14 December 2005, roughly quadrupled Ineos's turnover, which was previously around $8 billion.
In 2007 Ineos formed a joint venture with Lanxess and created Ineos ABS, comprising Lanxess's activities in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene production, located in Tarragona. Ineos paid €35 million in a first tranche. In March 2010 Ineos Healthcare terminated its drug development programme for commercial reasons.