INEOS Sports timeline

INEOS has always been drawn to those with grit, determination and focus. In business and in sport. That’s why it has been forging partnerships with sports teams since 2010

3
min 2022

INEOS appoints new Director of Sport - LEADING FROM THE FRONT

Sir Dave Brailsford has been appointed as its new Director of Sport. Dave, who was part of the INEOS 1:59 performance team that helped marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge storm into the history books, said it was an opportunity to work together with all the other sports teams across INEOS.

Over the past few years, INEOS has forged partnerships with some of the very best teams in the world in cycling, Formula One, sailing, football, hockey and running.

The latest partnership is with the world famous All Blacks from New Zealand.

“As the sports organisation has grown, we are looking to develop a performance agenda across all sports,” he said. Dave said its ethos mirrored how INEOS liked to do business.

“This culture and approach are at the heart of what makes INEOS such a successful business,” he said. “It has a federal structure with clear responsibilities, but also a desire to cross pollinate new thinking and ideas across the group. The aim now is to replicate this model across all the sports at INEOS.”

Clark Laidlaw, the All Blacks Sevens’ head coach, described the performance partnership with INEOS as unique.

“It will give us the ability to learn from some of the world’s highest performing teams across a range of sports,” he said.

Alongside Dave’s new role as Director of Sport, he will continue to lead INEOS Grenadiers cycling team, with Rod Ellingworth as his deputy.

“We are already deep into the planning for 2022 and are committed to going all in for the season,” he said.

“For me there is no more exciting place to be in global sport right now than at INEOS, given the extraordinary range of talents across the different teams” – Sir Dave Brailsford

Below we look at the INEOS Sports Timeline

2010 – Dec
INEOS becomes front of shirt sponsor of Lausanne Hockey Club

Lausanne Hockey Club.jpg

2017 – November
INEOS acquires Swiss football club FC Lausanne-Sport

2018 – April
INEOS TEAM UK competed for the America’s Cup in 2021. Now as INEOS Britannia it is the challenger of record for the 37th America’s Cup in 2024

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2019 – May
INEOS acquires cycling team TEAM Sky who become Team INEOS and then the INEOS Grenadiers (2021)

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2019 – August
INEOS acquires French football club OGC Nice

Nice football.jpg

2019 – October
INEOS supports Eliud Kipchoge’s record-breaking marathon as he becomes the first person to run a marathon in under 2 hours at the INEOS 1:59 Challenge

Eliud marathon.jpg

2020 – February
INEOS becomes Principal Partner to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1Team

2020 – December
INEOS joins Daimler and Toto Wolff as equal owners of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team

2021– July
INEOS becomes Performance Partner to New Zealand Rugby and the Teams in Black

2021 – December
Dave Brailsford announced as Director of Sport at INEOS

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2022 – January
INEOS becomes Performance Partner to Eliud Kipchoge and the NN Running Team

Eliud running team.png

3 min read

INEOS Oxford Institute

The accidental discovery by Alexander Fleming of a mouldy petri-dish in 1928 kickstarted a 20 year journey to develop the world’s first mass-produced antibiotic. But little progress has been made since the 1980s to develop new drugs to combat the growing ‘silent pandemic’ of antimicrobial resistance. Now scientists at the Ineos Oxford Institute have helped to identify a potential future drug that could extend the life of ‘last resort’ antibiotics. IN January 2021 INEOS committed £100 million to Oxford University amid fears that a growing, ‘silent pandemic’ of antimicrobial resistance would end modern medicine as we know it. A year on, scientists, based at the Ineos Oxford Institute, have made a promising discovery. Carbapenems are vital, often ‘last resort’, antibiotics that are used to treat serious infections, such as sepsis and pneumonia, when all others have failed. Despite that, some bacteria have found a way to render those carbapenems useless by producing enzymes called metallo-betalactamases (MBLs), leading to a rise in superbugs. But new collaborative research, conducted by scientists from the Ineos Oxford Institute and several institutions across Europe, has found that indole carboxylates, a new class of enzyme blockers, can stop those enzymes working, leaving the antibiotic free to attack and kill bacteria, such as E. coli, in the lab and in infections in mice. The researchers first screened hundreds of thousands of chemicals to see which would attach tightly to the metallo-beta-lactamases enzymes to stop them working – and which didn’t react with any human proteins. By zooming in to take a closer look at how they work, the researchers found that these potential drugs attached to the enzymes in a completely different way to any other drugs because they copied how the antibiotic behaved with those enzymes. The researchers then chemically changed aspects of the drugs to make them as effective as possible and tested them, in combination with carbapenems, against multi-drug resistant bacteria in both dishes in the lab and in mice. “The potential new drugs, in combination with carbapenems, were found to be many times more potent at treating severe bacterial infections than carbapenems alone,” said Professor Schofield. Antimicrobial resistance is currently responsible for about 700,000 deaths every year, but it threatens to get much, much worse, with fears that 10 million people could die every year by 2050 from common infections. “It is a massive problem because collectively we haven’t been making enough new clinically useful antibiotics,” he said. “As a society we must find ways both to make new antibiotics and protect the ones we have. The alternative is that routine modern medicine will be disrupted in a manner simply too horrendous to conceive.” INEOS’ £100 million, which was used to set up the Ineos Oxford Institute, will support research into the growing resistance to antibiotics. The money will enable more than 50 researchers to address the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, collaborate with other global leaders and develop new drugs for people and animals. “With the fantastic support we have received from INEOS, we can replicate the latest drug discovery programme within the institute for multiple different bacterial targets and applications,” said Professor Tim Walsh, Academic Lead (Microbiology) at the Ineos Oxford Institute. This latest research is the culmination of years of work and is a long way from being a proven solution. But if indole carboxylates can be developed, tested and made into safe, human medicines, they could extend the effectiveness and lifespan of some of our current antibiotics and save lives all over the world. Professor Tim Walsh said the discovery also proved that academia, given the space to create, could produce something amazing. “That’s what we have seen here,” he said. “And we hope to make many more similar promising discoveries as the institute grows over the years.” “This clever, Trojan Horse trick allowed these potential drugs to be highly effective against a very wide range of MBL-producing superbugs,” said Professor Christopher Schofield, Academic Lead (Chemistry), at the Ineos Oxford Institute at the University of Oxford. Scientists, based at the Ineos Oxford Institute, have made a promising discovery which could extend the life of 'last resort' antibiotics ‘This clever, Trojan Horse trick allowed these potential drugs to be highly effective against a very wide range of MBL-producing superbugs’ - Professor Christopher Schofield, Academic Lead (Chemistry), at the Ineos Oxford Institute at the University of Oxford Penicillin The discovery of Penicillin and its purification into the first antibiotic in the early 1940s was one of the greatest medical advances of the 20th century. Antibiotics changed the course of medical history, saving countless lives at the end of the Second World War, making childbirth safe for the first time in human history and allowing the creation of all modern surgery and cancer treatment that we benefit from today. Following the discovery of Penicillin there was a “golden age” of antibiotic discovery lasting several decades. Sadly, this era has finished, and we are left with a dwindling stock of medicines that are becoming ever less effective as bacteria naturally develop resistance to their actions. Society needs to continue working hard to keep hold of these medical gains, and avoid returning to a pre-antibiotic era when a simple cut could be fatal. The Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research was established to advance the search for solutions to one of the biggest public health challenges of our time. Researchers are working in the lab, in the field and with the public to discover new ways to prevent and treat drug resistant infections. INEOSOXFORD.OX.AC.UK

3 min read