The carmaker owned by the billionaire industrialist Jim Ratcliffe will make hundreds of job cuts across the company’s global workforce as his heavily indebted empire comes under increasing pressure.
Ineos Automotive did not specify an exact number of losses from its 1,700-strong workforce, saying only that it would shed “several hundred” head office staff across multiple locations, including the UK and parts of Europe.
The company owned by Ratcliffe, who also co-owns Manchester United, said the “strategic measures to structure its business” would help to simplify its head office and improve efficiency.
The Guardian understands that the cuts are unlikely to affect the company’s automotive plant in Hambach, France, which is building the Ineos Grenadier, an off-road vehicle that pays homage to the discontinued Land Rover Defender.
Ratcliffe has struggled to turn his vision into a profitable business after a string of problems at the French factory, which led the company to recall more than 7,000 of its Grenadier vehicles in the US over faulty doors.
Donald Trump’s decision to impose higher tariffs on imports of cars into the US, the Grenadier’s biggest market, has piled further pressure on the business.
Ineos Automotive is part of a sprawling business empire focused on chemicals manufacturing. Last month Ineos closed two chemical factories in Germany and said it would cut a fifth of jobs at its East Yorkshire plant, blaming “sky-high” energy costs and “dirt-cheap” imports from China.
The company has accused Europe of carrying out “industrial suicide” by imposing green policies that Ineos claims raise the cost of energy. The group is also scrambling to file anti-dumping cases to block the import of cheap chemicals products into the EU in an attempt to protect its core petrochemicals business from further financial strain.
But the company has already lost the confidence of credit rating agencies and debt investors. The Guardian revealed earlier this year that two leading credit ratings agencies had raised red flags over the Ineos Group, which could lead to its debt pile climbing to almost €12bn (£10bn) this year.
Fitch Ratings and Moody’s, which provide financial health checks for most big companies, said in February that Ratcliffe’s chemicals business had racked up debts that were between five to six times larger than the company’s annual earnings. Its debts have since climbed to eight times their annual earnings, according to Fitch.
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Ratcliffe, who has a net worth of £17bn, according to this year’s Sunday Times rich list, built Ineos by using debt to make strategic acquisitions in the chemicals industry, including a deal to buy an Antwerp chemicals facility from BP in 1998.
In recent years the prominent Brexit backer has expanded beyond the chemicals industry to invest in a string of sporting teams as well as the leather jacket maker Belstaff, and his automotive venture. In 2023 he took a minority stake in Manchester United, which has made a £300m loss over the past three years. Ratcliffe sold Belstaff in September to the sportswear group Castore.