Following an issue with hydrocyanic acid (HCN) supply for methionine production, Evonik has temporarily shut down its methionine manufacturing plants in Antwerp. Emmanuel Auer, head of animal nutrition business line at Evonik explained that “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.”

Evonik is investigating repair scenarios and is expected 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 informed as the situation develops.