BP gives 200 Baglan Bay, Wales staff one year's notice

15 February 2001 17:58  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (CNI)--Anglo-American energy and chemicals group BP confirmed on Thursday that it has informed almost 200 staff at its Baglan Bay, South Wales chemicals plant that their jobs would disappear by the end of this year or early in 2002 with the closure of vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) and ethanol production at the site.

BP, which announced over two year ago plans to cease VAM and ethanol output at Baglan Bay, will retain about 50 staff to run the approximately 100 000 tonne/year capacity isopropanol (IPA) unit.

A spokesman for BP said it was impossible to say how many of the 190 people affected by the VAM and ethanol plant closures would be made redundant. However, he said the company would do everything it could to mitigate the job losses through offers of alternative employment or early retirement where possible.

"We have informed the affected staff now to give them as much notice as possible," he added.

Closure of the approximately 125 000 tonne/year capacity VAM plant and around 180 000 tonne/year ethanol unit will be timed to coincide with the commissioning by BP of new facilities in Grangemouth, Scotland and Hull in northeast England. BP is building a 110 000 tonne/year ethanol plant at Grangemouth and a 250 000 tonne/year VAM plant at Hull. The ethanol plant is due onstream in the third quarter of this year, according to BP Chemicals. No precise onstream date was immediately available for the VAM unit, although it is also expected to be commissioned in the second half of 2001.

Together with a new ethyl acetate plant at Hull, they will create some 225 permanent new chemicals jobs.

By: Neil Sinclair
+44 20 8652 3214

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