Ineos closing Addyston chemical plant linked to years of controversy

Nov 04, 2024

Ineos Styrolution’s decision to pull the plug on its Cincinnati plant will bring 70-plus years of plastic production and a host of controversies to an end.

The manufacturer, part of a London-based global petrochemical company, said this week that it would permanently close its facility in the West Side village of Addyston and “commence a safe and responsible decommissioning process in the second quarter of 2025.”

The plant currently employs 185, officials had said earlier, down from more than 400 under previous owners.

It was not immediately known what would happen to them or a community of about 900 that’s counted on the tax revenue from its largest employer to stay afloat.

Local officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Ineos found itself in the spotlight this fall when emergency officials reported a leak of styrene, a colorless and flammable chemical used in plastic production. Emergency agencies evacuated 200-plus homes, businesses and schools near a Cleves railyard when they discovered a railcar there leaking the styrene.

Ineos quickly acknowledged the styrene was headed to its plant at 356 Three Rivers Parkway on the banks of the Ohio River.

“We deeply regret the disruption and stress this situation has caused to the local community,” the company said in a statement.

It promised a full investigation into the cause of the leak and updates on the incident. The next day, it reported that the leak had been contained and the railcar moved to its plant.

On Oct. 1, the railyard operator, Central Railroad of Indiana, told local residents it would no longer allow Ineos to park tanker cars on its property.

It was not the first time Ineos – and the companies that operated the Addyston plant before it – found itself in the crosshairs.

The Ineos site was developed in the 1880s by Matthew Addy as the Addyston Pipe Works. Addy founded the village in 1891 to house his workers.

Addyston Pipe Works became part of U.S. Pipe & Foundry Co. in 1899 when 14 iron and steel foundries merged, initially as United States Cast Iron Pipe and Foundry Co.

The Addyston name lived on, however, as the lead plaintiff in an 1899 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The court ruled that the 14 merging companies were violating antitrust laws by deferring to the high bidder on city contracts.

Monsanto Co. entered the Addyston story in 1952. That’s when the agrochemical giant, based in St. Louis and owned by German chemical maker Bayer since 2018, bought the local U.S. Pipe operation on the river and turned it into a plastics maker.

Regulatory organizations, environmentalists and neighbors were soon watching the Addyston plant.

Over the years, they’ve paid special attention to the Bond Road Landfill in Whitewater Township. The site was established in 1965 and used almost exclusively for Monsanto waste through at least the mid-1990s.

The landfill was operated by Jennings Sanitary Dumping System through 1973 and Brown Ferris Industries through 1980. Monsanto took ownership in 1980, with Brown Ferris as the operator. In 1998, Cincinnati's Rumpke Waste & Recycling bought the site and expanded it from 128 to 575 acres in 2021.

Rumpke had said that it currently accepts only a few loads of nonhazardous waste at the Bond Road Landfill a year, largely because its entrance is not very accessible. It laid the start of a new access road off Sand Run Road last year, but has no timeline for completing it, according to a spokesperson.

A Cincinnati grassroots group called Solid Waste Caucus has been monitoring the landfill, concerned that Rumpke will someday begin adding new waste on top of what Monsanto left there over the decades.

At various points, the facility attracted attention for a fire, improper covering of solid waste, contaminated runoff, spills and smells, records from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency show.

Ohio EPA was even wary of Rumpke taking over the site, following a landslide and fire at its main landfill in Colerain Township in 1996.

The agency initially denied Rumpke permission to buy Bond Road, with a spokesperson saying Rumpke had had “major compliance problems ... and serious operating problems.”

Public scrutiny at the plant continued into the new century.

Monsanto sold to Bayer in 1995, with a Bayer subsidiary called Lanxess taking over in 2005. That was two years after a chemical explosion in the plant killed a 45-year-old worker when a piece of metal struck his abdomen.

As Lanxess took charge, the plant reported three accidental chemical releases. Those incidents – in October and December 2004 and February 2005 – set off a series of events:

Ineos Group Limited, created and run by British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe, bought 51% of Lanxess in 2007, acquiring the balance two years later.

That’s the year it faced its first public relations headache over its Addyston operation, agreeing to pay part of more than $5 million for allegedly breaking federal law more than 30 times. That included a $3.1 million fine and $2 million in manufacturing upgrades to “resolve violations of multiple environmental laws,” the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said at the time.

Lanxess shared in the cost.

Ineos and Lanxess also shared a 2010 donation of $750,000 to the school district that closed Hitchens Elementary. In exchange, the district dropped a lawsuit it had filed the year before, seeking damages for alleged air pollution.

Nearly three decades after it left Addyston, Monsanto remained a target for Ohio officials.

In 2022, the Ohio Attorney General’s office settled a 2018 suit against Monsanto for $80 million. The settlement “forces the company to pay for the long-standing environmental damage it knowingly caused in Ohio with its (PCB) products,” the state announced at the time.

The federal government banned PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in 1979, saying they can cause cancer in humans, are toxic to fish and wildlife, and can damage waterways and soil. Monsanto, the nation’s only PCB producer, did not make PCBs at Addyston, a Bayer spokesman said, but it did use them in a pigment made there.

Ineos has also faced continued legal pressure.

On Sept. 11, less than two weeks before its delivery of styrene leaked, it agreed to a $181,420 fine from the U.S. EPA related to monitoring and repairing equipment in Addyston between 2017 and 2020. It settled without admitting to or denying the government’s allegations.

Just after the styrene incident, 11 residents of Cleves and nearby Hooven filed five federal lawsuits against Ineos and Central Railroad of Indiana, alleging medical issues related to the leak. Ineos said it would be on the hook for $5 million to comply with the lawsuits’ demands. In agreeing to move some of the suits from local to federal court, the company denied liability.

“Ineos makes no admission of any fact or the existence of any class, injury or liability for any defendant,” a footnote read.

Ineos makes ABS (which stands for the chemicals acrylonitrile, butadiene and styrene) and SAN (styrene acrylonitrile) polymers in Addyton. They are used to make a wide variety of automotive, household, health care and construction products.

In announcing plans to exit Addyston, Ineos said the market for its product line has become “increasingly competitive, particularly with growing competition from overseas imports.”

The investment needed to achieve “profitable cost competitiveness makes this site no longer economical,” a company statement said.

“Our focus is on the future,” its statement said. “We are taking steps to strengthen our position in the near term.”

Ineos also said its decision is not a reflection on the “performance and dedication” of its Addyston employees, adding that it is “fully committed to respectfully supporting them through this transition.”