Syngenta has put 377 Grangemouth jobs into consultation

Syngenta told its Grangemouth workforce on Thursday that it wants to stop making crop-protection chemicals there. The proposal covers 377 jobs. It is a consultation, not a closure notice. The company says a final decision has not been taken, and that it will still look at other options for the site.

The reason it gave is cost. Mike Hollands, who runs production and supply for the crop business and is president of Syngenta UK, said the people at Grangemouth are skilled, and that the site still cannot compete with the company’s other plants. The firm’s own line is that Grangemouth remains significantly more expensive to operate than those alternatives, after a long effort to close the gap. International competition is the other phrase it used. It did not publish the gap in pounds, or name the plant that would take the volume.

377

Jobs in the consultation. Not yet redundancies

£2.2m

Scottish Enterprise money, awarded last year to expand the site

None

A date for a decision, or for the last batch

Open

The company says other options for the site are still on the table

A grant, then a review

A little over a year ago Scottish Enterprise gave the plant £2.2 million to expand production. The award was described at the time as creating 38 jobs and safeguarding 14. The expansion and Thursday’s proposal do not sit well together. A public body paid to add capacity. The company now says the same site cannot be made competitive against its own other factories. It has also pointed to energy costs that it has not been able to get down to the level of those other sites.

Syngenta is owned by Sinochem, the Chinese state chemicals group. That is relevant to anyone who buys the product, because the alternative supply the company is talking about is inside the same group, not a sale of the business. If Grangemouth stops, the chemistry does not disappear. It moves to a plant Syngenta already thinks is cheaper. The Scottish site is the one that loses the work.

Hollands said the proposal was made with a heavy heart, and that the consultation would be a real one. Stephen Flynn, Scotland’s economy secretary, said the government had already told the board it opposed any rundown, and that it had been willing to look at support. Scottish Enterprise said it had been working on a package to keep the plant, on top of the grant it had already given. Brian Leishman, the local MP, said Syngenta had described that package as very generous, and had decided its future was somewhere else anyway.

The town has heard this before

Grangemouth’s oil refinery, the last in Scotland, shut last year. More than 400 people lost jobs there. In March, Alexander Dennis said it would close its bus plant at Falkirk, with 115 roles going. The town was also promised £200 million from the National Wealth Fund, back in 2024, for whatever industry came after the refinery. Flynn said on Thursday that none of that money has been allocated. A crop-chemical plant was one of the things still working. The consultation puts it on the same list, and the fund that was supposed to help the town has not yet written a cheque.

None of that is a decision to lock the gates. A proposal to remove 100 or more jobs in Britain has to go through collective consultation before anyone is dismissed, and the legal minimum for a number this large is 45 days. That is the floor, not Syngenta’s timetable. The company has not published one. It has said the unions and the workforce will be in the conversation, and that other paths for the site stay open while that happens. What it has not offered is a date, a name for the plant that would take the volume, or a promise that the expansion paid for last year still goes ahead.

If you buy the chemical

A customer of the Grangemouth output should not rewrite a supply plan tonight. The site is still running, and the company has not said when, or whether, the last batch leaves. What you can write down is that Syngenta has already decided the Scottish plant is the expensive one, that the cheaper options are its own, and that 377 people are now in a formal conversation about that.

A supplier into the site, of maintenance, energy, packaging or the intermediates, has a shorter problem. Spend that assumed an expansion is the old plan. Spend that assumes a steady 2027 should wait for the consultation. The company has not said the plant is saved. It has said the case for keeping it has not, so far, beaten the case for making the same chemistry somewhere else.