Ineos: Scrapped Bridgend 4x4 plant plans 'not down to Brexit'

The boss of a firm that moved production of a new 4x4 vehicle from Wales to Europe says claims it was down to Brexit are "nonsense".

Ineo's suspension of building a Bridgend plant in favour of a "ready-made factory" in France was a "simple business decision", Tom Crotty said.

Original plans involved creating about 200 jobs to make the Grenadier vehicle.

Ex-First Minister Carwyn Jones had said Ineos was "very pro-Brexit" and had a "responsibility to invest in Britain".

However, Mr Crotty told BBC 5 Live claims its change of plan was due to Brexit were "absolute nonsense".

The new plant had been planned to be built at Brocastle, near Ford Bridgend, which closed in 2020 with the loss of 1,700 jobs.

Ineos had said some of the skills required would be transferable from Ford.

But plans were halted when Mercedes-Benz, which has connections to Ineos from their involvement in Formula 1, offered their Hambach site in Moselle, France.

Mr Crotty said: "It's a very simple business decision. We were looking to build in Wales, we're very open and public about that.

"In the meantime we had an approach from Mercedes... who had a factory, a ready-made factory, on the Franco-German border, available to us.

"They were going to use it to build a 4x4. They changed their business position and therefore we had a very simple business decision - do we want to take the risk of building our own factory or do we want to take one that Mercedes have already built and is ready to go?

"So that's the driver... someone is presenting you with a state-of-the-art new factory, ready-built versus the risk of building your own."

Mr Crotty defended the decision of the company - which had been a vocal supporter of Brexit - to move to Europe.

"The reality was a better opportunity arose outside the UK. But let's be quite clear - we would have employed 200 people in Wales, we currently employ 6,500 people in the UK on our chemical plants," he said.

"We are producing huge numbers of high quality jobs. And that's the direction forward for UK manufacturing."

Earlier Mr Jones, Bridgend Member of the Senedd (MS), said because of its pro-Brexit stance Ineos had a "responsibility to invest in Britain".

"Even if there were circumstances of a factory elsewhere, it shows that what they said and what they did were two entirely separate things," he said.

"There they were saying Brexit would be good for Britain, there would be investment in Britain, and when they had the chance to invest in Britain the decision was to go to France," he told BBC Radio Wales.