With UK industry heavily reliant on CO2 as a by-product of ammonia production, the temporary closure comes less than a year after CF Industries announced the permanent closure of its Ince production facility near Chester.
Read more: UK CO2 shortage concerns erupt as Billingham halts ammonia production
Fuelled by volatile market conditions, the closure followed a lengthy halt in operations caused by rising global gas prices, resulting in a structuring operation that has seen the loss of around 350 jobs.
A CO2 shortage on the horizon, Christopher Carson, Founder & Director at Carbonic Solutions, revealed that this is the result of several events culminating in a ‘perfect storm’.
“Billingham, the last operating ammonia plant with CO2 capture serving our market, announced temporary closure because of the economics and the high price of natural gas,” he said.
“At the same time Yara – the largest ammonia producer in Europe and the one that’s most associated with CO2 capture for service to the bulk CO2 market – announced that they’re cranking down to 35% of capacity.”
According to Carson, this reduction will significantly impact the amount of CO2 that’s recovered.
This tightening in supply is compounded by an expected maintenance stoppage of Ensus’ bioethanol plant in the Teesside area during September.
“This looks serious for the UK… this one’s going to be deep.”
Referring to previous concerns of a CO2 shortage, he added, “We talked about the perfect storm a few years ago, this is the ‘more perfect’ storm for the UK.”
“This looks big, this looks serious for the UK. This one’s going to be deep.”
Set to feel the brunt of a shortage, the UK food and beverage industry could be forced to go further afield for supplies, increasing costs further.
Nick Allen, CEO, British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), told gasworld that a closure would raise ‘serious concerns’ and could potentially lead to an animal welfare crisis in the UK.
“We knew back in June that the closure of CF Industries’ Cheshire plant would leave CO2 supplies vulnerable to anything going wrong with their remaining Billingham plant and that we would be heavily reliant on overseas suppliers to make up the shortfall,” he said.
Read more: UK CO2 shortage: ’Serious concerns’ says food and drink industry
A silver lining?
Relying heavily on the ammonia production industry for CO2, UK industry could benefit from diversifying its sources by exploring alternative production routes.
In addition to his work at Carbonic Solutions, Carson is also the Managing Director at BioCarbonics, a company that produces ‘green’ CO2 using a by-product of green gas production generated from anaerobic digestion (AD) of green feedstocks.
Revealing that more companies are becoming receptive towards obtaining CO2 from alternate sources, Carson stated that BioCarbonics has already built a ’good’ customer base in the UK.
Although initially skeptical of CO2 sourced from biogas or other green feedstocks, companies are beginning to come around to the idea of using bio-CO2.
“They’re starting to talk about [bio-CO2] as baselines of their CO2 supply.”
By focusing on implementing and maintaining quality control and food safety systems for alternative CO2 sources, Carson hopes that BioCarbonics can show the industry that green CO2 is both viable and safe.
Awaiting the reaction from a major UK industrial gases supplier, gasworld is continuing to monitor the UK’s CO2 shortage situation.