Energy giant BP has agreed to sell its refinery at Coryton in Essex to European oil refiner Petroplus.
The deal, expected to be completed by the middle of this year, is worth £1.4 billion and means a change of employer for the 1,080 staff who work at the 54-year-old refinery.
Aviation fuels, liquefied petroleum gas, fuel oils and BP's entire UK bitumen business are all produced by the refinery, which has a crude distillation capacity of 172,000 barrels a day.
"BP is very much committed to the UK and does not need to own a refinery in the UK to offer its UK customers the best in fuel products," John Manzoni, chief executive of BP's refining and marketing business, commented.
"The sale will enable us to concentrate on continually improving our remaining European refineries so that they remain top-class assets."
Petroplus, which currently operates refineries in Switzerland and Belgium as well as on Teesside, is expecting to acquire a fourth in the near future when it completes the purchase of ExxonMobil's Ingolstadt refinery in Germany, a move announced last summer.
The Switzerland-based refiner floated on the Swiss stock exchange in November. Its shares rose by eight per cent on early-morning trading, while shares in BP rose by 0.75 per cent.
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