Salt mind 🧂

England is set to become a net importer of salt for the first time in history. Inovyn, one of Britain’s biggest producers of the white gold, has warned its Runcorn plant, which accounts for about half of Britain's salt output, may shutter without state support.

Salt is a feedstock for chlorine, caustic soda and other chemical chains that support water treatment, plastics, paper, detergents and metals processing. When that base weakens, problems do not stay at the bottom of the supply chain.

It’s not just salt. Britain is no longer making soda ash domestically, a basic chemical used in glass, paper and many other products. Can Britain still produce the basic materials modern life depends on? Does that matter?

Canary in the salt mine

In March 2026, the Chemical Industries Association said the UK chemical sector was under mounting strain, with falling employment and a growing likelihood of further site closures after several years of declining production.

If Britain can buy salt and basic chemicals from abroad, why worry? The problem is that cheap access is not the same as secure access. If a country starts losing the capacity to make even the boring basics, it can be a sign something larger is changing in its industrial model. 

NaCl

Chemically, salt is simple: NaCl, sodium chloride. But dissolve salt in water and you get brine. Run electricity through that – electrolysis – and you get chlorine, hydrogen and caustic soda.

Those three outputs feed into water treatment, plastics, cleaning products, paper making, textiles, and metals processing. This is the chlor-alkali industry, and it is one of the most important bits of industrial chemistry.

Chlorination is one of the biggest public health advances in modern history. Treating drinking water with chlorine drastically reduced waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid in many cities.

Caustic soda's proper name is sodium hydroxide, and one of the main ways to make it is from salt brine. It is used to make paper and pulp, soaps, detergents and textiles. It’s also key to the refining of bauxite into alumina, which is then turned into aluminium.

PVC is one of the world’s most widely used plastics, and chlorine is a key part of it. Water pipes, window frames, flooring, cable insulation, credit cards and some medical products all lean on PVC. And then there’s hydrogen, which can be used as a fuel, in refining, or as an input in other chemical processes.

Salt tax

Salt preserves food by drawing water out of it. Bacteria struggle to grow in arid environs. As a preservative, salt was therefore economically important. It extended shelf life, widened trade and gave states, merchants and armies a better chance of surviving winters and wars.

Because of its preservation powers, nations have gone to war over salt and the commodity was prized by the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Egyptians, and Indians. Naturally, governments have tried to skim off the top since the beginning of time. Salt taxes have been around at least since 300 BCE in China, where revenues contributed to the construction of the Great Wall of China.

In Britain, there are references to salt taxes in the Domesday Book. Reintroduced in 1641 there was such outcry that they were withdrawn in 1660 and not reinstated till 1693 under William III. In 1696 the tax was doubled and remained in force till 1825. Hundreds were employed to collect the tax.

Salt road

Salt mines themselves can become landmarks. The Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland, worked for centuries, includes underground chambers, lakes and chapels carved from salt. Hallstatt in Austria, another historic salt town, gave its name to an entire archaeological culture from the early Iron Age.

Salt caverns still matter in modern infrastructure. Underground salt formations can be used to store natural gas, and they are sometimes discussed as potential storage sites for hydrogen, too.

Many place names reflect salt’s importance. Salzburg means “salt fortress”. The city grew rich on nearby salt mines. The old trade routes carrying salt across Europe and Asia were as real, and as economically important, as many better-known routes for silk or spices.

Molten salt

One of the less familiar modern uses of salt is in some forms of energy storage and reactor design. Molten salt can store heat efficiently, which is why it is used in concentrated solar power systems. Solar plants can use mirrors to focus sunlight and heat molten salts and keep that thermal energy for later use.

That helps deal with one of the oldest problems in energy: the sun does not always shine when demand is highest. Molten salt systems do not solve everything, and they are not the dominant answer to grid storage, but they’re a step in the right direction.  

Pass the salt

Britain talks the talk on advanced manufacturing and future industries. But those ambitions sit on top of cheap power, basic chemicals, raw materials. Flashy businesses still depend on dull inputs.

Just this week, OpenAI nixed its Stargate UK data centre project, citing high energy costs and red tape. Salt and servers may seem like different stories. But they point to the same question: does Britain have the foundational chops that growth depends on?