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Veolia Water (formerly Vivendi Water, originally Compagnie Générale des Eaux) is the water industry of the French company Veolia Environnement and the world's largest supplier of water services.
1918 saw the creation of the SADE (Société Auxiliaire des Distributions d'Eau), specializing in water networks and the delivery of drinking water. In 1953, construction began on a CGE water treatment facility at Clay Lane, near London; by 2001, it was the world’s largest ultrafiltration plant, supplying water to 750,000 people in the city.
Veolia Water’s humanitarian crisis response team, Waterforce, was created in 1998, prompted by Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua and the flooding of the Yangtze River in China.
In 1980, CGE expanded into other businesses such as Veolia Transport and Dalkia services by acquiring other companies. The original CGE water industry remained as the water division of CGE. In 1998, CGE was renamed Vivendi, and in 1999, the environmental divisions of CGE was consolidated under Veolia, with the water division renamed Vivendi Water in 1999. In 2003, Vivendi Environnement was renamed Veolia Environnement. Two years later in 2005, Veolia Environnement united its four global divisions (Environmental Services, Energy, Veolia Transport and Water) under the Veolia brand. Vivendi Water thus was renamed Veolia Water.
In 2002, Vivendi Water expanded its municipal water services in 2002 to major cities such as Indianapolis (USA), Bucharest (Romania), Berlin (Germany) and Shanghai (China).
The UK water supply businesses branded as Veolia Water were sold by Veolia Environnement for £1.2 billion on 28 June 2012 to Rift Acquisitions, an entity established by Morgan Stanley and M&G Investments. Veolia Environnement is using the proceeds of the disposal to reduce its debt, as part of a 5bn-euro debt-reduction programme announced in December 2011 and will retain a 10% stake in the new business Affinity Water for at least five years. Affinity Water began operations on 1 October 2012.
In October 2010, Veolia Water was contracted to rebuild a wastewater treatment plant in Lille (France) in a project that will ultimately have the capacity to treat waste water from 620,000 inhabitants in the region.
In 2008, Veolia Water established Grameen-Veolia Water Ltd in partnership with the Grameen Bank, aiming to provide clean drinking water to 100,000 people in Bangladesh.
Veolia Water also has joint subsidiaries with other Veolia divisions. With Dalkia, it has Proxiserve. This subsidiary offers a number of home-based or domestic solutions, including heating and water distribution systems. With Veolia Environmental Services, it has SEDE Environnement (management of waste sludge) and SIDEF (Services to Industry for the Treatment of Effluent).
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