2nd October 2026
There is a much bigger question hiding behind the shock announcement that Syngenta is considering closing its Grangemouth operation and putting 377 jobs at risk.
It is not simply whether the Scottish Government can persuade the company to stay.
It is this:
How much risk should taxpayers take when they give millions of pounds to multinational companies whose investment decisions are ultimately made elsewhere?
The question arises because the timing could hardly be more awkward.
In May 2025, Scottish Enterprise announced a £2.2 million grant to Syngenta towards a £14.7 million expansion at its Grangemouth site. The project was expected to create 38 new jobs and safeguard another 14. Scottish Enterprise described it as an important investment in new manufacturing capacity for the global agricultural market.
Syngenta is an agricultural technology firm owned by Chinese state company Sinochem.
Just over a year later, Syngenta has announced a proposal to cease operations across the Grangemouth site and has begun formal consultation with employees and trade unions.
If the proposal goes ahead, 377 employees could be affected.
There has been no final decision, and Syngenta says it will consider alternatives during the consultation. But the company says the fundamental problem is that Grangemouth remains significantly more expensive to operate than its other production sites, despite efforts to reduce the difference. It points to increasing international competition and difficult energy conditions.
That is precisely why this is about more than one company.
The £2.2 million wasn't a mistake simply because circumstances changed
It would be unfair to suggest that the Scottish Enterprise grant was necessarily a bad investment.
Governments regularly provide financial support to businesses because the alternative may be that the investment goes somewhere else.
In Syngenta's case, Scottish Enterprise said the project had been secured for Scotland following competition with other international locations. The public money was intended to help bring investment, manufacturing and employment to Grangemouth.
If the grant helped persuade Syngenta to invest £14.7 million in Scotland, there was an obvious economic argument for providing it.
And foreign ownership, in itself, isn't necessarily a problem.
A foreign-owned company employing Scottish workers, buying from Scottish suppliers, paying taxes and producing goods in Scotland can make a substantial contribution to the economy.
But there is a difference between attracting investment and owning the investment.
The taxpayer can help finance a factory.
The taxpayer cannot ultimately decide whether the multinational keeps operating it.
That is where the risk becomes interesting
Imagine a Scottish company receives public support to build a factory and then closes it shortly afterwards.
There would inevitably be questions about whether the taxpayer had received value for money.
But the same question should surely apply when the recipient is a multinational company.
What happens when the company can look across its worldwide operations and conclude that producing the same goods somewhere else is cheaper?
Syngenta says precisely that is the problem facing Grangemouth.
The site is too expensive compared with alternative supply options.
From the company's perspective, that may be a perfectly rational commercial decision.
From the taxpayer's perspective, however, it raises another question:
Did the taxpayer's £2.2 million reduce the company's risk while leaving the taxpayer exposed when the economics changed?
That is not an accusation against Syngenta.
It is a question about how public investment should work.
And how many other examples are there?
This may be the most important question of all.
The £2.2 million is visible because Syngenta has suddenly announced a potential closure.
But there are likely to be many other grants, loans, investments, infrastructure contributions and other forms of public support going to companies across Scotland.
Some will work extremely well.
Some businesses will grow, employ more people and pay more tax.
Others will fail for reasons nobody could reasonably have predicted.
And some may decide, perfectly legally, that production should be moved elsewhere.
That makes it surprisingly difficult for the ordinary taxpayer to answer a basic question:
How much public money is currently supporting businesses whose ultimate ownership and strategic decisions lie outside Scotland?
It is a question worth asking Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government.
Not because foreign companies should automatically be excluded from support, but because taxpayers should be able to see what they are getting in return.
Should there be stronger conditions?
Perhaps the answer isn't to stop supporting multinational companies.
Instead, governments could look more closely at the conditions attached to the money.
Should substantial grants come with longer employment commitments?
Should some funding be repayable if a subsidised facility closes within a specified period?
Should there be stronger clawback arrangements?
Should taxpayers be able to see what happens to publicly supported equipment and facilities if production is subsequently moved abroad?
And perhaps most importantly, should governments distinguish between supporting a company to start operating in Scotland and supporting it to remain operating in Scotland for the long term?
These are difficult questions because excessively strict conditions could discourage companies from investing in the first place.
But the opposite extreme has its own problem.
If taxpayers take most of the initial risk while a multinational retains the freedom to move production when conditions change, the public needs to understand exactly what it is buying with its money.
Grangemouth makes the issue even sharper
The Syngenta announcement comes only about a year after Scotland's last oil refinery at Grangemouth ceased refining, with more than 400 jobs affected.
The town has therefore experienced two major industrial shocks in remarkably quick succession.
And it illustrates why individual factories matter.
A factory isn't just a building with employees.
It supports contractors, transport companies, maintenance firms, suppliers, local shops, households and public services.
When one major employer disappears, the economic impact can spread much further than the payroll.
That is why governments are willing to put public money into industrial projects in the first place.
But if governments are going to do that, perhaps they need to be much more transparent about the risks.
The question taxpayers should be asking
The answer isn't necessarily that Scotland should stop giving grants to multinational companies.
Nor is there evidence that Syngenta has done anything improper.
The company has made a commercial assessment that Grangemouth is substantially more expensive than alternative production locations. It has also begun a consultation rather than simply announcing an immediate closure.
But the episode leaves us with an uncomfortable question.
When taxpayers help finance a multinational's investment, who carries the risk when the company later decides that somewhere else is cheaper?
The £2.2 million given to Syngenta may turn out to have helped secure important investment and jobs for Scotland.
Or the consultation may ultimately result in the site being saved or substantially changed.
We do not yet know.
But perhaps this is the moment to ask another question before the next grant is announced:
How many other £2.2 million questions are already out there, quietly sitting on the taxpayer's balance sheet?