Ineos, the company behind plans to build two very large ethane carriers (VLECs) in the Far East, is the largest chemicals group the man or woman in the street has never heard of.
In fact, it claims to be the world leader by sales, but is far from being a household name.
However, Ineos is big news in the maritime world for trying to ride the wave of new US ethane exports based on the shale gas boom.
Steady business
The company already has steady business shipping ethane from the US to Britain’s biggest chemical and refining plant at Grangemouth, Scotland.
The gas is carried on its own Dragon-class ships of 27,500 cbm, said by the company to be part of a fleet of 14 vessels under its control.
Ineos Shipping & Trading claims to transport 5m tonnes of products for “our” businesses.
The wider group has annual sales of £48bn ($59bn) — one-third of the size of oil trader Vitol — and yet it too remains in private hands. In July, Ineos reported second-quarter Ebitda profits of $500m.
The company, founded only two decades ago, is 60%-owned by Jim Ratcliffe, a 66-year-old former chemical engineer from Oldham, Lancashire, north-west England, now said to be Britain’s richest man with a net worth estimated at £21bn.
The other 40% is in the hands of business partners Andy Currie and John Reece.
Newbuilding negotiations
Ineos' website says the company overall has 168 manufacturing plants in 24 countries and the growing fleet of ships.
It is negotiating for two VLEC newbuildings of about 90,000 cbm, as my colleague Lucy Hine revealed.
These vessels would be chartered from a shipowner, such as BW Gas or Navigator Gas, and almost certainly be constructed in China or, more likely, South Korea.
They would likely be used to carry ethane from the US to Antwerp, Belgium, where Ineos is building a near-$3.5bn petrochemical plant.
But there is also a new gas “cracking” refinery at Taixing in China to be served with US ethane.
Ineos has a long-term supply contract with the refinery's owner, SP Chemicals, but the US-China trade stand-off potentially casts a shadow over wider gas trades between the two nations.
Shale shadow
Meanwhile, Ineos’ plans to pioneer shale gas exploration and production in Britain is also under a shadow due to heavy public opposition and a weak government consumed by Brexit.
It would be good to know what Ineos’ wider plans are, but getting an interview with Ratcliffe is harder than pushing a camel through the eye of a needle
It would be good to know what Ineos’ wider plans are, but getting an interview with Ratcliffe is harder than pushing a camel through the eye of a needle.
I have been trying unsuccessfully for two years and requests to Ineos' PR company to talk about maritime matters proved fruitless this week.
Ineos is one of the largest oilfield owners in the UK North Sea as well as being the owner of Grangemouth and the Forties pipeline.
It controls Grangemouth with state-owned PetroChina with which it also has a joint venture refinery near Marseilles in France.
As well as the new plant in Belgium, Ineos announced it would be building its first chemical plants in the Middle East, in partnership with Saudi Aramco and Total.
Car building plans
There are even plans to start a Land Rover Defender-style car building company, Projekt Grenadier — named after a pub in London's Mayfair.
Ratcliffe does occasionally put out fairly blunt statements criticising the UK Government’s tax or energy policies. He has also lauded Brexit.
Yet, I for one am not clear where Ineos, or Ratcliffe himself, is mainly based for tax purposes.
“I don't really want to talk about where I live because that's my private affair,” he once said.
Sporting influence
It seems we just have to watch this interesting industrial and shipping group speak through its investments
Sport is an area where Ineos is happy to raise its public profile. Ratcliffe’s brother Bob runs the Ineos Football arm that has just taken over French Ligue 1 football club OGC Nice.
Ineos already owns the Swiss Challenge League football team FC Lausanne-Sport and reportedly considered a bid for Chelsea.
Earlier this year, Ineos took over the highly successful British cycling team from Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV.
Birmingham University graduate Ratcliffe is said to be a Manchester United supporter and the owner of the superyachts Hampshire and Hampshire II.
I can’t confirm any of that of course. It seems we just have to watch this interesting industrial and shipping group speak through its investments.
