Yorkshire Water

Parent company: Kelda Group plc

Regulated utility: Yorkshire Water Services Ltd

Yorkshire Water is one of the 10 largest water and sewerage companies in the world. Yorkshire Water changed the name of its parent company to Kelda in the mid nineties to reflect its aspirations to grow its non-regulated business. It was also at that time that Yorkshire Water became notorious during the drought when it suggested that those of its customers who wanted to use a lot of water should move to another region. In 1996 it was bottom of the OFWAT service league.

Since then the company has managed a dramatic improvement in performance. It is now rated second on levels of service by OFWAT. Further more its water service is rated first for operating cost efficiency in OFWAT's report water service unit costs and regulatory efficiency. Alongside this it has reduced its involvement in areas outside of the water industry. This cumulated in the announcement earlier this year that Kelda was selling its 45% stake in the Waste Recycling Group.

Now the main business left is the US water supply business Aquarion - one of the ten largest investor-owned water utilities in the US - which supplies 52 communities in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Aquarion serves 211,000 homes and businesses, or approximately 677,000 people. Turnover last year was £93.7 m.

It has been successful as part of the Bray consortia in winning a major long term contract with the MoD. The Bray consortia comprises Yorkshire Water with a 45% stake, Earthtech Engineering Ltd and Halliburton KBR. The contract is the largest PFI deal in the UK and a major Private Public Partnership. The deal involves the transfer of responsibility for water and wastewater assets and their operation at over 1000 MoD sites in the Midlands, Wales and South West.

Web site: www.keldagroup.com