Royal Vopak N.V. is a Dutch independent multinational company that stores and handles products ranging from chemicals, oil, gases and LNG to biofuels and vegoils.
Its purpose is to "Store vital products with care", which derives from the products Vopak stores and how they are being stored The company was created by the merger of Van Ommeren and Pakhoed in 1999.
In 2002, the distribution of oil and natural gas related products was split off; a new company Univar was created for that purpose. The head office is located in Rotterdam.
Vopak is listed on Euronext Amsterdam.
Merger
In 1998 the companies Royal Pakhoed nv and Royal van Ommeren nv decided to merge. Both companies were offering storage services for oil, petrochemical products, vegetable oils etc. Both companies were also active on the market of shipping (tankers) and other logistical services.
Besides their overlapping activities Van Ommeren offered heavy-goods transport via Dockwise and Pakhoed offered distribution services for chemical products via the company Univar.
The European Commission ruled that the merger would give the combined company too much market power in storage services in the Antwerp-Rotterdam-Amsterdam (ARA)-area, on which made the offer to sell parts of their storage-tank capacity.