01
About the Utility
Vitens is a Dutch drinking-water company. Its Executive Board is chaired by Tjeerd Roozendaal, whose portfolio includes abstraction and treatment, network management and supply; a Supervisory Board and an Annual General Meeting, which adopts the financial statements, complete its governance. Under the Drinking Water Act, the return on equity and debt is capped by a maximum WACC that the minister sets every three years, while the ILT supervises drinking-water quality and tariffs, drawing on advice from the ACM. At 31 December 2025, Vitens had 2,813 thousand administrative connections. Locations named in its recent publications include Leeuwarden, Utrecht, Amersfoort and Goor.
02
Water System
Vitens delivered 352.9 million m³ of drinking water to customers in 2025. As early as 2013, the company warned of irreversible contamination of groundwater reserves. New supply is slow to secure, because Vitens states that a new water abstraction takes more than 20 years to become operational, and the ILT has warned that, without action, a structural national drinking-water shortage could arise from 2030. Through the Living Lab Strategic Heart, a five-year partnership with an eight-firm consortium, Vitens is developing a future drinking-water concept, with a pilot installation planned at 5 to 10 million m³ a year. Hourly-reading smart water meters are being tested in Leeuwarden, with roll-out dependent on the results.
03
Network & Service Performance
Vitens operates a distribution network of approximately 50,000 km. In 2025, undersupply minutes stayed within the company’s target of 18 minutes or less and the Water Quality Index was 0.016. Quality events nonetheless remain visible: three major boil-water advisories were issued that year, in Goor, Utrecht and Amersfoort. Water not invoiced is reported first as an expectation based on partial invoicing and later as a final actual, so provisional and final values should not be read as a trend. The ILT recorded 63 Vitens reports of standard exceedances after works, incidents and complaints in 2024.
04
Investment & Priorities
Investment is the clearest change in Vitens’s recent position. Net investment, excluding contributions from new connections, rose in every reported year to €341.5m in 2025. The company has said gross investment will rise to around €650 million by 2033, a plan on a broader gross basis rather than an outturn. Customers are funding part of the step-up: Vitens raised drinking-water tariffs from 2025 explicitly to invest in the future. Non-current borrowing also increased over the year, while allowed returns remain capped by the maximum WACC.
Net investment
Reported actuals, 2020–2025, excluding contributions from new connections
All six values are reported actuals from a single key-figure table on one consistent basis. Gross investment plans are on a different basis and are not plotted.
Sources: Vitens, Annual Report 2025 (English), key figures.05
Sustainability & Resilience
Vitens frames its environmental agenda around Elke Druppel Duurzaam, an ambition for every drop to be sustainable by 2030. It aims to halve its CO₂ emissions by 2030 and to be fully CO₂-neutral by 2050; the baseline year for the reduction is not stated. Location-based and market-based scope 2 emissions are reported separately below. On source protection, Vitens has backed the proposed European PFAS restriction, calling a total ban necessary to guarantee safe drinking water.
06
Key Challenges
- Protecting groundwater reserves from irreversible contamination, including PFAS.
- Securing new abstraction capacity when a new source takes more than 20 years to become operational.
- Delivering a sustained investment step-up as tariffs rise and returns stay capped.
- Maintaining supply reliability and water quality while major boil-water advisories still occur.
- Halving CO₂ emissions by 2030 on the way to neutrality in 2050.