Victrex at Hillhouse: what it makes, what its permit covers, and what it says about PFAS
Victrex makes plastics on the Hillhouse site, the same industrial site as AGC Chemicals Europe’s fluoropolymer plant. This page sets out what the public record says about it: who it is, what it makes there, which substances its permit names, its regulatory record, and what it has said about PFAS, with the source for each.
Who Victrex is
Victrex plc is a public company, number 02793780, incorporated on 25 February 1993 as Mandorla Limited and renamed on 1 October 1993. Its operating company at Hillhouse, Victrex Manufacturing Limited (02845018), was incorporated on 16 August 1993 as Grangebright Limited and also renamed on 1 October 1993. Both give their registered office as “Victrex Technology Centre, Hillhouse International, Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire, FY5 4QD” (Companies House, retrieved 14 October 2026). The Environment Agency’s permit is held by Victrex Manufacturing Limited.
Victrex says it “traces its origins to ICI, where PEEK was first developed in 1978”, that it “was established in 1993 following a management buyout from ICI”, and that it was “listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1995” (Victrex, “Victrex at a glance”, retrieved 14 October 2026). Its 2025 annual report repeats that “Victrex was formed in 1993 following a management buy-out from ICI” (p. 8).
A 2003 trade article dates the full-scale PEEK plant at Thornton Cleveleys to 1987, before the buy-out. Plastics Today reported that “four managers at ICI led a group that bought the British company’s struggling Advanced Materials operation”, and that the new owners “relocated R&D to Thornton Cleveleys, the site of a full-scale PEEK plant built in 1987” (31 January 2003).
The Environment Agency’s register shows the current permit, EPR/BU5640IA, with a registration date of 3 November 2006. The permit’s own status log records the application, duly made on 23 March 2006, and six variations since: Warehouse 3 added (2008), a new polymer blender (2013), a third polymer production plant, PPP3 (application June 2013, varied September 2013), effluent segregation at the main outfall (2014), a third compounding line (2016), and a Polymer Innovation Centre with a combined water discharge limit (21 November 2016).
The Enterprise Zone’s website describes the zone as “occupied by over 40 companies, including the world headquarters of Victrex PLC (polymers)” (hillhouseez.com, undated, retrieved 14 October 2026). The draft Hillhouse Masterplan Review 2026, written by WSP for Wyre Council and published by the council for consultation until 6 November 2026, states that the zone “is primarily owned and controlled by private entity NPL Group (UK) Ltd (NPL) with major occupiers Victrex PLC, AGC Chemicals, and Addison Project having substantial freehold interests” (p. 3), and places a “substantial vacant plot” in the middle of the zone “north of the Victrex site and adjacent to Addisons” (p. 7).
What it makes at Hillhouse
The permit describes the installation as producing “various grades of high performance thermo-plastics, including polyaryletherketones (PAEK)”, with “a production capacity of approximately 7,200 tonnes per annum (tpa) within three Powder Plant facilities, referred to as PPP1, PPP2 and PPP3” (permit V007, introductory note, 2016). PEEK (polyether ether ketone) is one of this family, and Victrex’s own statements refer to “Victrex PEEK and PAEK polymers” (FAQ). The permit also covers a compounding plant making “compounded pellets consisting of polymer and fillers”, natural-gas boilers, and “solvent recovery by distillation” (Table S1.1), and a Polymer Innovation Centre, “a small scale facility, with a production capacity of approximately 30 tpa” (introductory note).
PEEK is not a fluoropolymer. Dalmijn et al. (2025) describe fluoropolymers as a subset of PFAS “consisting of a carbon–fluorine backbone”. PEEK is built differently. One of its raw materials, 4,4′-difluorobenzophenone (named in the permit, Table S3.1), contains fluorine. Plastics Today (2003) calls it “4,4-difluorobenzophenone (BDF)”, and Victrex’s annual report calls BDF “one of the key monomers used to manufacture PEEK” (p. 62). But a Solvay patent explains that these plastics “are prepared by aromatic nucleophilic substitution”, “with the fluorine atoms of the 4,4′-DFBP acting as leaving groups” (US 9,815,937 B2, 2017). The fluorine comes off the monomer as the chain forms; it does not become part of the backbone.
The permit names the substances monitored at the plant’s “Raw Material Charging & Polymerisation” vents: “Hydrogen Fluoride”, “Diphenylsulphone”, “4,4-Difluorobenzophenone” and “Hydroquinone” (Table S3.1, points A3 and A10; hydrogen fluoride also at the Polymer Innovation Centre stack, A17). The permit adds that “acetone and process intermediates, such as aqueous mixtures, are stored in bunded storage tanks”. The Hillhouse permit’s listed activities (Table S1.1) do not include making BDF. Victrex says: “Historically, the vast majority of BDF – one of the key monomers used to manufacture PEEK – has been manufactured in our own operations within the UK.” It adds that “non-UK sourcing has recently become a larger proportion than historically (through several contractual sources in Asia)” (Annual Report 2025, p. 62). The Environment Agency’s records list a separate Victrex Manufacturing permit for a “BDF plant” at Seal Sands on Teesside (EPR/NP3339MT), and Victrex names its UK monomer plants as “Rotherham and Seal Sands” (Annual Report 2025, p. 58).
What the permit says goes out, and where
Water. In the 2016 decision document the Environment Agency wrote that the installation “releases emissions to the River Wyre via the main Hillhouse Estate outfall point”. The permit’s introductory note adds that the drainage systems “are combined on site before being released to the River Wyre through the main Hillhouse site outfall”, and that some process effluent can be diverted for treatment at the Fleetwood Marsh works.
Since 2016 the permit has set one combined limit, at a release point it calls W5, on the effluent from the plants’ two effluent pits. Its limits there include acetone 700 mg/l, chemical oxygen demand 2,000 mg/l, suspended solids 300 mg/l, and “Fluorides (expressed as Fluoride, F-)” 2,400 mg/l (Table S3.2). A separate “high fluoride effluent” from PPP2 and PPP3 goes to sewer (point S1, for which the permit notes “Eventual receiving water is Morecambe Bay (Lune Deeps)”, Table S3.3, note 3), or to the estuary at point W4 “when the sewerage undertaker has restricted the availability of emission point S1 or under other circumstances by agreement with the Environment Agency” (condition 3.1.4). A W4 release is allowed only in a four-hour window beginning 30 minutes after high water and when the river flow rate is above 700 m³/s, with a fluoride limit of 6,000 mg/l and a cap of 180 m³ per tide (Table S3.2). The permit also sets annual limits to water of 13.5 g of mercury and 5 g of cadmium, calculated from the trace metal content of the hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide used on site (Table S3.4; Schedule 6).
The labels W1 to W5 in Victrex’s permit are its own. Victrex’s W1 is a monitoring point at its “Plant PPP1 Effluent Pit” (Table S3.5). AGC’s permit uses W1 for a different thing, its main discharge point. Dalmijn et al. (2025) state that AGC’s plant “shares this discharge point with the Victrex poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) production plant that is located on the same industrial site”. In duplicate samples taken on one day, 12 February 2023, they measured 30 and 33 ng/L sum of detected PFAS there, the lowest of the points they sampled. The same paper reports that concentrations of EEA, perfluoro(2-ethoxy-2-fluoroethoxy)acetic acid (the paper says that “From 2012 onward, APFO was replaced by EEA-NH 4”, the ammonium salt of EEA, at AGC’s plant), at that point “have been found to be substantially higher during a period in the second quarter of 2023 when the thermal treatment plant was offline”. The paper describes the thermal oxidizer in its account of the AGC plant’s emission controls (what the published measurements show).
Air. The permit sets a limit for acetone (1.5 kg a day at each of two scrubbers, measured continuously). At the main plants’ charging and polymerisation vents (A3, A10) it gives “No limit set” for hydrogen fluoride, diphenylsulphone, BDF and hydroquinone, with an “Annual programme of monitoring to be agreed in writing by the Environment Agency”. At the Polymer Innovation Centre stack (A17), hydrogen fluoride also has “No limit set”, and its monitoring “shall be undertaken as agreed through IC1 in table S1.3 of this permit”, an improvement condition requiring a report on the plant’s performance (Table S3.1, notes 5 and 7; Table S1.3).
Terms the permit does not use. We searched the full text of the 2016 consolidated permit for “PFAS”, “PFOA”, “perfluoro”, “polyfluoro”, “fluoropolymer” and “PTFE”. None of these terms appears in it.
What the Pollution Inventory records
The Environment Agency’s Pollution Inventory substance-release tables include these entries for permit BU5640IA. The other substance-release entries for the permit (carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, non-methane volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, phosphorus, and total organic carbon to “Wastewater”) are below the reporting threshold in all three years. Amounts are in kilograms; “below threshold” means below the Inventory’s reporting threshold, for which no amount is given.
| Substance and route | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fluorides, as F, “Controlled Waters” | 233,114 | 194,710 | 58,793 |
| Fluorides, as F, “Wastewater” | 391,432 | 301,361 | 398,248 |
| Fluorine and inorganic fluorine compounds, as HF, to air | below 1,000 | below 1,000 | below 1,000 |
| Total organic carbon, “Controlled Waters” | 65,888 | 59,590 | below 50,000 |
| Mercury and cadmium, “Controlled Waters” | below threshold | below threshold | below threshold |
| Carbon dioxide, to air | 20,083,000 | 16,149,000 | 15,479,000 |
The Victrex rows for these three years do not include PFOA, PFOS or perfluorocarbons (PFCs). PFOA does not appear anywhere in the 2022, 2023 or 2024 datasets, for any site, so the Inventory cannot show whether it is released.
Regulatory status
- Environmental permit: EPR/BU5640IA, holder Victrex Manufacturing Limited, listed activity “Organic Chemicals; Plastic Materials Eg Polymers - 4.1 A(1) a) (viii)” (Environment Agency register, retrieved 14 October 2026). The newest permit documents on GOV.UK are those of 21 November 2016. The register entry also lists a “Directly Associated Activity (included and an MCP)”; the 2016 permit does not use the term “MCP” (medium combustion plant) or “medium combustion”.
- COMAH: the HSE COMAH 2015 public information register (searched 14 October 2026) lists the establishment “Thornton Cleveleys”, operator Victrex Manufacturing Limited, as a lower-tier establishment under the Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 2015. It gives the hazard classes as “Flammable liquids and gases”, “Hazardous to the aquatic environment” and “Petroleum products and alternative fuels”, and the date of the last planned COMAH site visit as 24 January 2025.
- Planning: Lancashire County Council granted Victrex PLC permission on 16 December 2022 for the “Erection of portal building for storage of hazardous waste materials” at the Victrex plant (LCC/2022/0056).
Incidents and breaches on record
- Acetone, recorded in November 2016. The Environment Agency’s decision document of 21 November 2016 records that “since the commencement of operations in PPP3 there have been two occasions when the released effluent marginally exceeded the acetone consent limit for the W3 release point”. The Agency added that “the overall concentration would have remained below the maximum levels which could be theoretically discharged from the main Hillhouse Estate outfall point via W1 and W3 combined” (p. 6). The combined W5 limit was introduced in the same variation.
- July 2018, acid and alkali spill. The Blackpool Gazette reported on 27 May 2021 that Victrex Manufacturing Ltd and Veolia Energy and Utility Services UK “must pay a combined £80,000 to Wyre Rivers Trust and Lancashire Wildlife Trust following the chemical spillage in July 2018”. It reported that an Environment Agency investigation “revealed that permit conditions were breached when two chemical tanks containing Hydrochloric Acid and Sodium Hydroxide, located in the boiler house, were overfilled and both secondary and tertiary containment systems failed to prevent the chemicals leaking to the ground”; that contamination was later “identified in groundwater nearby”; and that groundwater was collected for treatment until December 2019. It quoted the Agency’s Lancashire environment manager: “The Environment Agency has closely monitored the clean-up and remediation and is satisfied that there has been no lasting damage from this incident.” The article does not name the legal instrument. The Agency’s enforcement-action register returns no entry for Victrex (searched 14 October 2026; the same search returns entries for other companies), and its current published list of enforcement undertakings begins in July 2024, so neither confirms how the case was resolved.
- Victrex’s own account of 2024 to 2025. Victrex states that it “has an effective system for reporting and investigating incidents and near misses with zero reportable environmental incidents within the period” (Annual Report 2025, p. 61, year to 30 September 2025). That is the company’s own report; it does not say what it counts as reportable.
What Victrex has said about PFAS
Victrex’s FAQ answers the question “Do Victrex PEEK products contain PFAS?” as follows: “PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have not been intentionally added, used, or generated as by-products in the manufacturing process of unfilled Victrex PEEK and PAEK polymers.” It adds that “independent third-party laboratory analysis on representative product samples has confirmed that Perfluoroalkyl substances (including PFOA, PFHxS, PFCA’s C9-C14) are not detectable in Victrex products down to test detection limits” (undated, retrieved 14 October 2026).
The same answer states: “A small number of Victrex products contain PTFE (a fluoropolymer, part of the PFAS family of substances) as an additive – these are manufactured by third party companies which comply with the PFOA restrictions of the POPs regulation (EU 2019/1021). These include VICTREX™ PEEK grades: 150FC, 150FW, 450FC, 450FE, J301; VICTREX CT™ 200 MIC.”
In its 2025 annual report Victrex writes: “Victrex does not manufacture these materials and we have started to position VICTREX™ PEEK as a safe alternative to PFAS in several applications or industries including Cookware, Electronics and Industrial” (p. 62). Its PFAS page says “Victrex has a range of PFAS-free* polymers”, the asterisk leading to a footnote in the same terms as the FAQ wording quoted above, without the FAQ’s list of grades that contain PTFE (victrex.com/en/pfas).
These statements are about Victrex’s products. None of the three mentions the Hillhouse site, emissions from it, or the PFOA in the soil and water around it.
What the investigation reports say about Victrex
The WSP reports for the Environment Agency’s investigation name Victrex only as a land use. The Phase 2 factual report (July 2025) says “Victrex is a legacy ICI business still operational involved in the plastics manufacture” (pp. 46 to 47 as published). In our text extracts of the Phase 2 and Phase 3 factual reports, “Victrex” appears once and three times respectively, each time in a description of land use.
What we do not know
- Whether Victrex’s effluent on its own has been tested for PFAS. The permit text does not use any of the terms listed above, and the Pollution Inventory rows for the site do not include PFOA, PFOS or PFCs. Dalmijn et al. (2025) sampled the shared outfall; the study does not report a separate sample of Victrex’s effluent before it joins that outfall.
- Whether the permit has changed since 2016. GOV.UK carries only the 2016 documents, while the register lists a medium combustion plant activity and Victrex reports “permanently shutting down one of the boilers at our main UK Hillhouse production site” (Annual Report 2025, p. 61).
- Where the PTFE-containing grades are made. Victrex’s statement does not say, and the permit describes the compounding plant’s fillers only as “fillers”.
- The legal form of the 2018 case. See above.
- Whether Victrex has said anything about the contamination around the site. We have found no such statement. We searched its 2025 annual report, its “Victrex at a glance” page, its FAQ and PFAS pages, and local press reporting on the investigation.