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Ineos is exploring asset sales and has held talks with creditors over refinancing some of its debt pile, as the chemicals empire built by UK billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe battles a prolonged industry downturn.
The London-headquartered group is exploring the sale of assets held within its vinyls business Inovyn, according to people familiar with the matter. The assets could be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the people said, cautioning that talks remained in preliminary stages.
Ineos has also been in talks with credit firms to refinance bonds that will mature next year, according to several people familiar with the group’s financing situation, while shareholders in recent weeks injected €200mn of new equity into the business alongside raising another €300mn of financing linked to its inventory.
It comes as Ineos searches for ways to raise cash, cut costs and reduce its leverage, as it faces an extended downturn in the chemicals sector.
Europe’s chemicals producers are struggling with a deluge of cut-price imports from China, high energy prices and stifling regulation, on top of overcapacity and weak demand across the globe.
Ineos borrowed heavily as it became one of the world’s biggest chemicals companies through a series of acquisitions. A prolific user of European high-yield debt markets, the group’s bonds have plunged amid wider trouble in the chemicals sector and concern over the company’s leverage.
In 2024, Inovyn was the biggest business by earnings under Ineos Quattro, one of two holding groups the chemicals giant uses to issue debt that is being watched closely by high-yield credit investors.
Debt issued by Quattro had been trading at par in September last year but fell to 65 cents on the dollar last month. It had recovered to above 80 cents on the dollar by mid-February after an equity injection and new financing announced at the end of January.
Quattro’s ratio of net debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) stood at 7.7 at the end of 2025, up from 1.9 in 2022. Rating agency S&P regards any company with a net leverage ratio of more than six times to be “highly levered”.
Ratcliffe told the FT this month that Ineos was focused on “replacing the debt as it comes due” and would “not . . . be looking for new funding to do different things”, given conditions in the chemicals industry.
Inovyn makes chemicals including caustic soda and PVC, used widely in the construction sector, whose fortunes are linked closely to the wider economy. Demand for PVC has been muted in Europe, which accounted for 70 to 90 per cent of Inovyn’s PVC sales in 2024. The business is also highly exposed to electricity prices, which have soared in Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Its assets also include its Runcorn facility, which makes the chlorine that purifies 98 per cent of the UK’s drinking water. It is unclear whether this business will be included in the group’s disposal plans. Inovyn operates sites across Europe, with facilities in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Norway and Sweden.
Inovyn’s adjusted ebitda fell 41 per cent in 2024 — the most recent year for which figures are reported — to £348mn, against revenues of £3.1bn. Last year it announced the closure of two facilities in Germany, blaming “crippling energy and carbon costs, and a lack of tariff protection”.
S&P on Thursday downgraded Quattro’s debt deeper into junk territory, on estimates that its earnings had fallen in 2025, further raising leverage. The rating agency said that Inovyn’s “energy-intensive” PVC operations put “further pressure” on Quattro’s profit margins.
Ineos last year sold its composites assets to US private equity group KPS Capital Partners.
Ratcliffe’s stake in Ineos has made him one of the UK’s wealthiest individuals and in 2024 he became a co-owner of Manchester United. The billionaire, who lives in Monaco, apologised in February after he said the UK had been “colonised by immigrants”, drawing criticism from UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Ineos declined to comment.