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.
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, then trading as Asahi Glass, 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.
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.