Following an issue with the hydrocyanic acid (HCN) supply for methionine production, Evonik announced Nov. 12 that it has temporarily shut down its methionine manufacturing plants in Antwerp, Belgium.

“Unfortunately, we have suffered an outage of HCN supply for our methionine production. The supply failure impacts both of our methionine plants in Antwerp. We have decided to send a force majeure notification to our customers and suppliers with immediate effect, in accordance with our contracts,” Dr. Emmanuel Auer, head of the Evonik Animal Nutrition Business Line, explained.

Evonik said it is investigating repair scenarios and expects to have a solution very soon. Meanwhile, the company is trying to meet customer demand with stock materials and does not expect any impact on earnings.

The technical teams are working hard to solve the problem, and customers will be kept informed as the situation develops, Evonik said.

Evonik is among the global leaders in specialty chemicals, with a focus on more specialty businesses, customer-oriented innovation and a performance-oriented corporate culture forming the heart of its corporate strategy. Evonik is active in more than 100 countries and generated sales of 13.3 billion euros in fiscal 2018, with an operating profit of 2.15 billion euros from continuing operations and with more than 32,000 employees.

The Nutrition & Care segment is led by Evonik Nutrition & Care GmbH and contributes to fulfilling basic human needs. That includes applications for everyday consumer goods as well as animal nutrition and health care. This segment employed about 8,200 people and generated sales of around 4.6 billion euros in 2018.

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