Ineos

Ineos is a privately held multinational chemical group, founded in 1998 by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and headquartered in Rolle, Switzerland. It is one of the world's largest petrochemical companies by revenue, with operations spanning polymers, olefins, chlor-vinyls, and specialty chemicals. In 2026, Ineos announced closures of European chemical plants, citing unsustainably high energy costs relative to global competitors. The closures represented a concrete materialisation of the structural competitiveness warnings the sector had been raising since the 2022 energy crisis.

Ineos has a significant presence in the UK (Grangemouth refinery and Runcorn), Belgium (Antwerp), Germany, France, and Norway. Its products feed into plastics, packaging, construction materials, and pharmaceuticals throughout Europe. The company is energy-intensive both in feedstock (naphtha and gas as chemical building blocks) and in process energy, making it among the most exposed to sustained TTF spikes.

Ineos has historically been outspoken about European energy policy, with Ratcliffe publicly criticising what he described as excessive regulatory burden and green levies on industry. The 2026 plant closures lend credibility to those warnings: if a company of Ineos's scale is exiting capacity, smaller operators face even more severe pressure.