Ineos announced plans on Monday to build a new petrochemical production plant in mainland Europe and expand capacity at its existing plants in Grangemouth, Scotland and Rafnes, Norway at a cost of about €2 billion.

“These are three major new projects,” said Jim Ratcliffe, founder and chairman of Ineos.

“Collectively, it’s the equivalent of building a new world scale cracker in Europe.”

Ineos said it was looking at sites across Europe including Antwerp in Belgium for its new world scale 750,000 tonne PDH plant.

It said it was planning to increase the capacity of its crackers at Grangemouth and Rafnes in Norway to more than one million tonnes each.

With these cracker expansions, Ineos would add up to 900,000 tonnes of ethylene to its overall production capacity

Gerd Franken, CEO Ineos Olefins & Polymers North said: “These are exciting times for Ineos as we plan to further increase the capacity of our crackers in Europe and at the same time to build an entirely new PDH plant.

“These expansions and new builds will increase our self-sufficiency in all key olefin products and give further support to our derivative businesses and polymer plants in Europe.

“All our assets will benefit from our capability to import competitive raw materials from the US and the rest of the world.”

Ratcliffe added: “These projects represent the first substantial investments in the European chemicals industry for many years.

“It has only been made possible because of Ineos massive $2 billion investment in our Dragon Ships programme which allows us to import ethane and LPG from the US in huge quantities.”