With annual sales of almost £30 billion, 16,000 employees and 70 sites worldwide, INEOS is one of the world's largest chemical companies. The integrated petrochemicals business has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly through acquisitions from ICI and, more recently, BP.

INEOS operations span everything from refining all the way down the supply chain to production of many industrial polymers and speciality chemicals. The company's strategic importance was highlighted last year when a strike at its Grangemouth site in Scotland impacted the flow of North Sea oil and threatened UK fuel supplies.

"Getting things right is critically important, not just to us as a company but also to the country," Tom Crotty, chief executive, INEOS Olefins and Polymers, said at the National Skills Academy Process Industries recent national conference in York.

The INEOS chief's presentation focused first on issues at the Grangemouth site, where there is huge on-going investment in infrastructure and feedstock facilities, to upgrade all aspects of the former BP operation, including skills.

"Our business is chemicals, and our approach to investment in terms of skills development is quite different [to BP's]," said Crotty. "We have a lot of change programmes in Grangemouth. We are in-sourcing significantly our skills. A lot of it was outsourced to third parties, which we feel very uncomfortable with. There are too many key skills we cannot afford to lose on that site."

Describing outsourcing as a dangerous place to be from a cost-control point of view, the CEO said: "We always have an approach when we buy businesses that we can take a lot of costs out of the operation. Typically, 25-30% of those costs come out of every acquired business within two years ... So we are taking out contract employees in non-productive areas and reinvesting some of that money back into people we employ in areas that are productive."

Crotty went on to identify problems in recruiting good quality people in particular skills areas, including process engineers and electrical instrumentation engineers. He further noted a worrying fall in the number of applications for apprenticeships and graduate engineering positions, and described the age profile of the INEOS workforce as one of the most serious issues facing both his company, and the process industry in general.

INEOS, said Crotty, is typical of most process companies. It has a high proportion of employees in the 46-55 age group, many of whom will be retiring within the next 10 years. Conversely, the percentage of employees aged around 25 years old is much smaller.

""This is about motivation and encouraging youngsters to think positively about careers in these industries. The real issue is around trying to ensure we have young people interested in coming in to the process industries," said the INEOS boss.

"I am not sure we are getting that right. This is a big challenge for us as a country, a challenge that the government needs to understand and take on board. There is a strong drive to get children into tertiary education, but is that drive putting them into the skills areas that are really going to benefit the country in 15-20 years from now? I question that seriously."

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Process Engineering