AGC Blamed 'Four Years of Losses' for Closing Hillhouse. Three of Those Years Were Profits.
AGC Chemicals Europe told 190 families it is closing the Hillhouse plant after 'a loss for the past four years.' Its own audited accounts (Companies House 03825057) record profits in three of those four years and a loss only in 2024: a year in which a fire stopped production for three months. The 2024 accounts also name an increase in PFAS regulations, not market conditions, as the directors' first principal risk. Every figure below is from AGC's own filings.
Every figure and every quote below comes from AGC’s own audited accounts and its own public statement. We have added nothing but the arithmetic.
Updated 5 August 2026. AGC Chemicals Europe has responded and does not dispute the profit figures. Its statement is published in full, with a timeline and our response to it, in Updates and responses at the foot of this article.
On 13 July 2026, AGC Chemicals Europe announced it intends to close its plant at Hillhouse in Thornton-Cleveleys. Production would end this year, and 190 employees and 18 agency workers are at risk.
What AGC told the public. In the statement carried by ITV News, the Blackpool Gazette and others, the company said the site faced “significant financial and operational challenges” and had been “generating a loss for the past four years,” and that “despite continued investment from AGC Inc. and the hard work of Hillhouse employees, the situation is no longer sustainable in the context of a volatile and competitive market.”
What AGC’s own accounts say. AGC Chemicals Europe Ltd is company number 03825057, registered at the Hillhouse site. These are the audited accounts of the company that runs the plant, signed off with a clean opinion by its auditors, MHA, every year. After tax, the bottom line was:
- 2021: a profit of £3.9m
- 2022: a profit of £8.2m
- 2023: a profit of £3.5m
- 2024: a loss of £1.8m
Three profits, one loss. “A loss for the past four years” is not true, and it is not our figure. It is theirs, audited and filed.
And the one loss year was a fire year. AGC’s own 2024 accounts record that on 19 October 2024 a fire in the plant’s Steam Pyrolysis section caused “an outage of 3 months.” To be fair to the company, it says the impact “to customers was minimal,” because it kept them supplied from a finished-goods stockpile. But production stopped for three months, and the company is claiming on its insurers for “income lost directly attributable to this incident,” money that has not yet come in and is not in these figures. So the £1.8m loss is stated before any insurance recovery. AGC did not mention the fire in its closure statement at all.
Now the part that matters most, and again it is entirely in their own words. Every company must set out, in its Strategic Report, what its directors judge to be the principal risks to the business. Here is what AGC’s directors wrote in the 2024 accounts, in this order:
“The directors consider the principal risks and uncertainties to the business to be: i) Increase in PFAS regulations. ii) Capital investment weighted towards satisfying HSE and Environmental requirements. iii) Market volatility and increasing competitive threats.”
Now read that against the reason they gave the public. The closure statement reached for the third risk on that list, “a volatile and competitive market,” and bolted on “four years of losses” that the accounts disprove. The two risks the directors ranked above it, an increase in PFAS regulations and the cost of meeting health, safety and environmental requirements, do not appear in the public explanation at all.
The accounts go further and spell the first one out. In the contingent-liabilities note, AGC writes that recent developments suggest “a trend toward regulating PFAS as a single group,” and that “there is a possibility that future regulatory developments could affect AGC Chemicals Europe Ltd’s business performance.” That is the company’s own written assessment of what threatens it. It is not four years of losses. It is PFAS regulation and the cost of environmental compliance.
And this is not a quirk of one year’s wording. In the accounts for 2021, 2022 and 2023, the same directors opened their risk section with the words “Whilst trading continues to strengthen,” and listed only ordinary risks: the global economy, supply chains, raw material prices. PFAS regulation is not mentioned in any of those three years. It appears for the first time in the 2024 accounts, and it goes straight to the top of the list. So on AGC’s own telling, the thing that changed was not four years of decline. It was the arrival, in 2024, of PFAS regulation as the single biggest risk to the business. The public was told none of that.
They have weathered far worse, and stayed. Their statement leans on the word “despite”: despite continued investment, the situation is no longer sustainable. Their own history shows what investing through hard times looks like here, because they have done it before. The same company, named AGC Chemicals Europe, Ltd. throughout this period though its Japanese parent was then named Asahi Glass Co., Limited, recorded operating losses of £1.2m in 2014 and £4.0m in 2015. Two years running, and the 2015 loss was around six times deeper than 2024’s. They did not close. They invested through it, and by 2022 the site was making a £10m operating profit. A single, fire-hit £1.8m loss at a company that made £3.5m the year before is not, on their own record, a reason to shut anything.
Their own auditors saw no problem. When those 2024 accounts were audited, the auditors confirmed they had found nothing to cast doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. As recently as its last audited accounts, this was not a company on the edge.
A Strategic Report is not a press release. It is required by law, signed by a director, filed at Companies House, and written for the shareholders and lenders who need the truth to judge a business. It is the document a company is legally bound to get right, and the one its auditors must check for consistency with the accounts. A press statement carries none of that. So it is worth noticing where each version of events was put. In the document AGC is legally required to get right, its directors reported three profitable years, described trading as strengthening, and named PFAS regulation as their principal risk. “Four years of losses” appears only in the press statement, the one place no one is held to account for what it says.
Why this matters. We are not putting words in AGC’s mouth. Every line above is AGC’s own: its statement, its audited profits, its fire, its list of principal risks, its assessment of the PFAS threat. Set side by side, they do not tell the same story. The reason given to 190 families, “four years of losses,” is contradicted by the company’s own audited accounts, and it is nowhere in the company’s own list of what actually threatens the business. To disagree with this article, AGC would have to disagree with the accounts its own directors signed.
We will let you decide why a company would tell its workforce and the public one thing, while its own directors recorded another in the documents they are required by law to file.
Check it yourself. Do not take our word for any of it. Go to Companies House, search company number 03825057, and open the accounts filed on 8 September 2025 (year to December 2024), 23 July 2024, 26 June 2023 and 13 July 2022. The profit and loss figures are on the Statement of Comprehensive Income in each; the principal risks are on the first page of the 2024 Strategic Report; the PFAS note is Note 24. Read them, and decide for yourself what you have been told.
Updates and responses
Timeline
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 13 July 2026 | AGC announces a proposal to close the Hillhouse plant, citing “a loss for the past four years” |
| 14 July 2026 | This article published |
| 15 July 2026 | Hillhouse Watch puts questions to AGC Chemicals Europe and invites comment |
| 22 July 2026 | AGC responds with its statement |
| 23 July 2026 | Hillhouse Watch puts five further questions, reply requested by 6 August |
| 4 August 2026 | AGC responds again. It confirms the profit figures, declines the business-unit split, and declines to name its spokesperson |
| 5 August 2026 | AGC’s response published here in full |
AGC’s response, in full
AGC replied on 22 July 2026 and again on 4 August, asking that its response be attributed to “an AGC Chemicals Europe, Ltd. spokesperson” and confirming it was “developed by an internal team and approved by our Directors.” The company had no objection to publication. On the accounts:
“Regarding the proposal to cease manufacturing, as we said in our public statement, this stems from four years of losses, as well as ongoing market volatility and increasing competition. You are quite right that our Companies House accounts show a profit for some of these years; however this doesn’t reflect the full picture.
AGC Chemicals Europe, Ltd. is formed of two core businesses - a resale business, which is mainly based in Amsterdam and remains unaffected by this proposal, and the UK manufacturing business at the Hillhouse Site. The AGC Chemicals Europe, Ltd. accounts at Companies House that you have seen provide consolidated results from both businesses. Unfortunately, the year-on-year losses generated by the manufacturing site are significantly impacting the overall business sustainability of AGC Chemicals Europe, Ltd.
We are sharing the financial details with the employee representatives as part of the ongoing consultation.
Finally, I’m able to confirm that all disclosures through Companies House comply with the Companies Act 2016 and Financial Reporting Standard FR102, the requirements of which means that statutory accounts must show the performance of the company as a whole rather than as individual business units. We are not required to disclose individual sales and geographical segmentation.”
Asked on 23 July to reconcile that with the accounts, and to provide the split, the company replied on 4 August:
“Regarding the accounts of the company, you are right that the activity of AGC Chemicals Europe, Ltd. is ’the manufacture, sale and resale of fluoropolymers’ and it is that whole activity of all relevant business units that is reported in its statutory accounts. As many companies do, we have separate business units within the overall corporate entity so we can manage the company and track its performance. The UK manufacturing business unit at the Hillhouse Site is a business unit that is making losses… The Amsterdam-based resale business unit is also part of AGCCE, is profitable, and is not part of the proposal.
Whilst I understand that you would like a breakdown of the performance of these internal business units, we are unable to provide that to external stakeholders for reasons of commercial confidentiality. We have provided this information confidentially to unions and employee representatives as part of the consultation.”
Question by question, and what we can confirm
The distinction between what AGC has told us and what we have been able to check is not a technicality here, because the company’s whole explanation rests on figures it has not released. The middle column is AGC’s account. The right-hand column is what we can establish independently.
| Our question | AGC’s answer | What we take it to mean | Have we been able to verify it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do the accounts show profits in 2021, 2022 and 2023? | “You are quite right that our Companies House accounts show a profit for some of these years” | The figures in this article are accepted as correct | Yes. Audited and filed at Companies House, company 03825057. Anyone can check them |
| How can there be four years of losses? | The accounts consolidate a profitable Amsterdam resale unit with a loss-making Hillhouse manufacturing unit | The Hillhouse site alone has lost money, and the group figures conceal that | No. The figures that would show it have been given to unions and employee representatives and withheld from the public as commercially confidential. We cannot test the claim either way |
| Reconcile that with the single principal activity in the accounts | Restated that the activity is “the manufacture, sale and resale of fluoropolymers” and that this covers “all relevant business units” | We take AGC to mean the units are internal management divisions, not separate reporting segments | Not reconciled. The 2024 accounts still record one principal activity, already including resale, to which “the whole of the turnover is attributable” |
| Which legal entity runs the Amsterdam resale business? Registration, address? | “The Amsterdam-based resale business unit is also part of AGCCE” | It is a division of company 03825057, not a separate company | Partly. The answer tells us it is internal to AGCCE. We have not established whether any registered Netherlands branch exists, and we have not been given a name, number or address to check |
| Will you provide the turnover split? | Refused, commercial confidentiality | The split exists and has been shared with unions and employee representatives | No, and it cannot be. Not public |
| Will you confirm the spokesperson’s name and capacity? | Refused. Attribution to “an AGC Chemicals Europe, Ltd. spokesperson” | The statement is a corporate position, approved by Directors, rather than one person’s view | No. We know only a first name from the correspondence |
One point of fairness. AGC is entitled to withhold commercially confidential figures, and entitled to speak corporately rather than by name. Neither refusal is improper. We record them because the effect, taken together, is that the central claim cannot be checked by the people it most affects.
What the response establishes, and what it leaves open
The company does not dispute the figures. “You are quite right that our Companies House accounts show a profit for some of these years.” The audited profits of £3.9m, £8.2m and £3.5m stand unchallenged. What AGC disputes is not the arithmetic but what it means.
Its explanation is that the profits belong to a different business. On AGC’s account, the filed results consolidate two units: a profitable Amsterdam resale business and a loss-making Hillhouse manufacturing business. If that is right, the group figures would not show what the plant alone was doing.
Amsterdam is a business unit, not a separate company. “The Amsterdam-based resale business unit is also part of AGCCE.” So there is no separate legal entity here; both sit inside company 03825057.
Three things remain unresolved.
The accounts record one activity, not two. The 2024 accounts state a single principal activity, “the manufacture, sale and resale of fluoropolymers,” to which “the whole of the turnover is attributable.” Resale is already inside that single activity. We asked AGC to reconcile the description of two consolidated businesses with that wording. The reply restates the wording without reconciling it.
The geographical split was withheld by choice, not by absence of a duty. The email says AGC is “not required to disclose individual sales and geographical segmentation.” The 2024 accounts put it differently: the geographical analysis of turnover required by the Companies Act “has not been provided as, in the opinion of the directors, such disclosure would be seriously prejudicial to the interest of the Company.” That is a discretionary exemption the directors elected to use, and the accounts say so on their face. It is not the same as no obligation existing.
The split is the whole of the defence, and it is the one thing not produced. AGC’s answer to “the accounts show profits” is “those profits are Amsterdam’s.” The figures that would demonstrate it have been given to unions and employee representatives, and withheld from everyone else as commercially confidential. That is the company’s right. It also means the public explanation for closing the plant now rests on numbers the public cannot see.
A note on the assurance itself. The statement reads: “I’m able to confirm that all disclosures through Companies House comply with the Companies Act 2016 and Financial Reporting Standard FR102.” There is no Companies Act 2016. UK company law is the Companies Act 2006. The accounting standard is FRS 102, not FR102. We take both to be typographical and we draw no conclusion from them. We record them because of where they appear: inside the one sentence in AGC’s reply that certifies compliance with the law, in a response the company told us was “developed by an internal team and approved by our Directors.” We hold ourselves to naming documents correctly, and we note it here on that basis alone.
And the largest point is not addressed at all. Nothing in either reply engages with what AGC’s own directors listed as the principal risks to the business, in their own order: an increase in PFAS regulations first, the cost of meeting HSE and environmental requirements second, market volatility third. The public explanation reached for the third and omitted the first two. We asked about the accounts. The company answered about the accounts. The ranking of its own risks stands where it was.
Correspondence with AGC Chemicals Europe: our approach 15 July 2026; company response 22 July; further questions 23 July; company response 4 August. The company’s statement is reproduced above in full.
Sources: AGC Chemicals Europe Ltd audited accounts, Companies House company number 03825057, filings for the years to December 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 (profit and loss on the Statement of Comprehensive Income; principal risks on page 1 of the 2024 Strategic Report; PFAS at the contingent-liabilities note, Note 24). Historic figures (2014, 2015) from the same company’s accounts under its former name, Asahi Glass. AGC Chemicals Europe closure statement, 13 July 2026, as carried by ITV News and the Blackpool Gazette. All figures are AGC’s own filed and audited numbers; the arithmetic is ours.