INEOS is a privately held petrochemicals, speciality chemicals and energy group with its headquarters at 38 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge, London. It runs crackers, refineries, polymers and intermediates plants as well as oil and gas production, trading and carbon storage businesses, and it describes itself as holding 148 facilities in 26 countries with around 23,000 employees and annual revenues of about 50 billion dollars. The group was founded in 1998 by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who remains chairman, and consists of 28 individual businesses, each with its own executive board and its own profit-and-loss responsibility.
Business structure
INEOS operates as a federation rather than a single integrated company. Its chemicals interests include olefins and polymers in Europe and the United States, INEOS Inovyn in chlorvinyls, INEOS Styrolution in styrenics, INEOS Phenol, INEOS Aromatics, INEOS Acetyls, INEOS Enterprises and INEOS Composites. INEOS Energy, established in 2020, produces and trades oil, gas and LNG from assets in the UK, Denmark and the United States, and develops hydrogen and carbon capture and storage. Beyond chemicals the group owns INEOS Automotive, which builds the Grenadier off-road vehicle, and a sports portfolio including football, Formula 1 and cycling teams. Group financing is raised through vehicles such as INEOS Quattro and INEOS Enterprises, which publish investor relations information.
Project ONE in Antwerp
The largest project in the group is Project ONE, a 5 billion euro ethane cracker under construction in the port of Antwerp. In July 2026 INEOS took delivery of the last two process modules, weighing 6,920 tonnes and 7,200 tonnes and standing 55 metres high, which had been built in Abu Dhabi and were trapped in the Strait of Hormuz for months by the conflict with Iran before passing through during a one-week ceasefire in mid-June and sailing to Antwerp via Suez. The group says about 2,500 workers from some 80 contractors are on site, more than 14 million man-hours have been worked, and 1,250 kilometres of instrumentation and electrical cable are being laid after the commissioning of a 380 kV main substation in the first quarter of 2026. Mechanical completion is scheduled for summer 2027 with start-up of the cracker targeted for the second half of 2027. INEOS states that the plant's cracking emissions will be about three times lower than the average European cracker and that low-NOx burners and selective catalytic reduction will cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 71 per cent, creating 450 direct jobs.
Greensand carbon storage
On 18 September 2026 King Frederik X of Denmark opened the Greensand carbon dioxide storage facility at the Port of Esbjerg, which INEOS Energy leads with Harbour Energy and the Danish state company Nordsøfonden. Greensand is described by the group as the first full-scale CO2 storage site in the European Union. In its first commercial phase it expects to store up to 400,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, with the design allowing expansion to 4 to 8 million tonnes annually. CO2 from Danish biomethane plants is liquefied, trucked to a terminal at Esbjerg, shipped aboard Carbon Destroyer 1, which INEOS calls the EU's first purpose-built CO2 carrier, and injected into the Nini West reservoir, a depleted oil field about 250 kilometres offshore and roughly 1,800 metres below the seabed. David Bucknall is chief executive of INEOS Energy.
Pressure on European operations
INEOS has been candid about the cost pressures facing European chemicals. On 22 September 2026 it announced the idling of its Acetyls plant, describing it as Europe's last world-scale acetic acid and derivatives facility, and attributed the decision to energy prices running at roughly twelve times US levels. The group has also argued publicly against rapid North Sea decommissioning and has criticised what it calls deindustrialisation, while continuing to invest selectively: in August 2026 INEOS Inovyn agreed to buy the UK's only ethylene dichloride asset out of administration, and in July 2026 INEOS and Recuro signed a memorandum of understanding to build an advanced plastics recycling plant in Norway.
Energy and trading positions
INEOS Energy gives the group upstream and midstream exposure that most chemical producers lack. Its exploration and production activities cover onshore and offshore fields in the UK, Denmark and the United States, including North Sea acreage, and the business also trades oil, gas and LNG; the group has announced LNG supply arrangements and a partnership with Shell to examine new oil and gas opportunities in the Gulf of America. That combination means INEOS sits on both sides of the energy value chain, buying ethane, propane and naphtha as chemical feedstock while selling crude, gas and LNG, and now storing CO2 from third parties for a fee. Group communications are handled through a press contacts page that lists named spokespeople rather than a single general enquiry address.