No sign of Cheshire fertiliser plant reopening

Only the Teeside plant will resume production

Published 22nd Sep 2021

Although their Teeside plant will reopen within the next couple of days, CF Fertilisers have made no mention of their Ince site starting back up any time soon.

This comes after the Government made a deal with CF Fertilisers to restart the production of C02 could cost British taxpayers tens of millions of pounds.

The American company, who produce who produce 60% of the UK's carbon dioxide as a by-product, should be restarting production within the next couple of days, thanks to taxpayers' money.

The fertiliser company has made no mention of fertiliser production restarting.

George Eustice, Environment Secretary, said: "It's going to be in the many millions, possibly the tens of millions, but it's to underpin some of those fixed costs. These are two big expensive plants."

The deal brokered by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng will see the UK Government provide "limited financial support" towards CF Fertilisers' running costs to prevent a food supply shortage across Britain's supermarkets.

The agreement will be in place for three weeks while the "CO2 market adapts" to the surge in global gas prices, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Read More: Government strike deal to restart C02 production

How will this affect low income families?

With low income families receiving £20 less on Universal Credit and this weeks worries about gas and energy, there are worries that many will end up on the streets this winter.

Adam Scorer, Chief executive of National Energy Action, said: "Its a hammer blow to some of the people on the lowest incomes in the least efficient homes. We have millions of households who walk a tightrope every year, every day, every week, of the year in balancing a tight budget against essential costs. This will knock many of them off that tightrope."

How did this start?

Earlier this week, CF Fertilisers stopped production due to 'high natural gas prices' making their business 'inoperable'.

C02 is a vital ingredient within the food industry, as it is used to stun animals in slaughterhouses and to keep packaged products fresh.

Lindsay Duncan, campaigns manager for the charity World Animal Protection, has said that the rise in gas prices has "highlighted how unsustainable our current farming system is."

The campaigns manager said: "Large scale mass production of sentient beings causes suffering at an immense scale and to have to cull animals at the end of it just shows how broken this process is. We should be working towards a high welfare sustainable farming system which doesn't rely on factory farms and focuses on consuming less animal products instead."

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