Vopak: The Tank-Storage Giant Repositioning Away From Oil Toward Gas and Batteries

Vopak is the world’s largest independent tank-storage company and a case study in how an infrastructure business repositions itself away from the product that made it, without giving up the cash flow that product still generates. In 2025 the company generated proportional revenue of €1.92 billion, proportional EBITDA of €1.18 billion, a record, and net profit of €604 million, with its terminals 91 per cent occupied. In the first half of 2026 it earned €186 million, raised its full-year EBITDA guidance to €1.18 to €1.22 billion and paid a €0.72 interim dividend. Yet Vopak’s management measures itself less by this year’s profit than by a target set in 2022: to invest €4 billion by 2030, half in gas and industrial infrastructure and €1 billion in energy-transition assets, while shrinking its exposure to oil storage. The company has committed €2.3 billion so far. This article explains the business, the strategy and the risks. It is part of the Netherlands Company Stories hub.

What is Vopak and how does its business model work?

Vopak is a landlord for liquids: it owns tanks, jetties, pipelines and the land under them at major ports, and it rents that capacity to customers under contracts that typically run for several years, so its earnings depend on occupancy and contract pricing rather than on the price of the oil or chemicals in the tanks. The company traces its origins to 1616, when a group of Amsterdam porters founded a cooperative to handle goods on the quays, and took its current form in 1999 through the merger of Van Ommeren and Pakhoed, two Rotterdam storage groups; the distribution business was spun off as Univar in 2002.

The economics resemble those of a port authority or a pipeline. Terminal capacity is scarce because deep-water jetties and permitted industrial land are scarce, so a well-located terminal in Rotterdam, Singapore, Houston or Fujairah can command long-term contracts from oil majors, traders and chemical producers who need to store product near refineries, blending hubs or consumption centres. Vopak reports a proportional occupancy figure, which was 91 per cent for 2025 and 91 per cent in the first half of 2026, and a proportional operating cash return, which was 16.2 per cent over the first nine months of 2025 and 16.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2026. Both measure how hard the asset base is working.

Because Vopak holds many terminals through joint ventures, it reports proportional figures that include its share of those ventures alongside IFRS consolidated figures. In 2025 proportional revenue was €1.92 billion and proportional EBITDA €1.18 billion, a margin above 60 per cent, while IFRS revenue for the first half of 2026 was €677 million. The gap is largest in gas: the Gate LNG terminal in Rotterdam, co-owned with Gasunie, the Cartagena LNG regasification terminal in Colombia, where Vopak holds 49 per cent, and the Indian joint venture Aegis Vopak Terminals, which listed in Mumbai in 2025, are all proportionally consolidated.

Ownership is concentrated. HAL Holding, the Curaçao-registered investment company controlled by the Van der Vorm family and listed in Amsterdam as HAL Trust, owned 51.4 per cent of Vopak at the end of 2025, a stake it built from the late 1990s. HAL also owns 100 per cent of the dredging group Boskalis, which it took private in 2022 for about €4.2 billion, and majority stakes in Coolblue and Safilo. The effect is that Vopak, though listed, is run with a patient-capital horizon, and the 2022 strategy, with its 2030 investment target, reflects that.

Why is Vopak moving away from oil storage?

Vopak is reducing its exposure to oil storage because the structural demand for storing refined products in Europe is falling as refineries close and fuel demand declines, because oil terminals are capital-intensive to maintain and increasingly difficult to permit, and because its two largest shareholders, HAL and the market, have rewarded a cleaner mix with a higher valuation. The company set out the strategy in 2022 under chief executive Dick Richelle, who took over at the start of 2022, and chief financial officer Michiel Gilsing: grow in gas and industrial terminals, accelerate in new energies, and improve returns in the existing portfolio by selling under-performing assets.

The divestment list is long. Between 2019 and 2021 Vopak sold terminals in Amsterdam, Hamburg and Algeciras, mostly to infrastructure funds. In 2022 and 2023 it sold its chemical terminals in the Rotterdam Botlek area to an infrastructure investor, a chemical terminal in Savannah in the United States, and its ship-agency business. In 2025 it sold Vopak Terminal Korea, booking a €15 million loss, and the Barcelona terminal of the Terquimsa joint venture. In the first quarter of 2026 it transferred Hindustan Aegis LPG in India to its listed Indian affiliate AVTL, booking a €7 million exceptional loss, mainly because the rupee had weakened since the 2022 purchase. Each sale has been small; collectively they have shifted the portfolio.

The redeployment is visible in the capital commitments. Of the €2.3 billion committed since 2022, about €1.7 billion is in gas and industrial infrastructure, of which €1.1 billion is under construction and mostly due to be commissioned by the end of 2027. Roughly €650 million is in energy-transition infrastructure, €575 million of it under construction, and the Dutch battery projects make up more than half of that. About €650 million of projects started since 2022 are already commissioned and contributing to EBITDA.

The company’s stated priorities for new energies are hydrogen and ammonia, CO2, battery storage and sustainable feedstocks. In practice ammonia and hydrogen have been slower to generate bankable projects than Vopak hoped in 2022, which is why the 2026 investments went into batteries, pyrolysis oil and sustainable aviation fuel instead. The port’s own hydrogen timetable, discussed in the Rotterdam hydrogen hub story, has slipped by one to two years, and Vopak has sequenced its spending accordingly.

What did Vopak earn in 2025?

Vopak’s 2025 was its best year on record on the measures management uses: proportional EBITDA of €1,183.6 million, up from €1,170.2 million, net profit of €604.0 million, up 61 per cent, and earnings per share of €5.23, with proportional occupancy of 91 per cent and a fourth-quarter occupancy of 92 per cent. Net profit excluding exceptional items was €411.9 million, or €3.57 per share, with the gap explained mostly by a €113 million dilution gain from the May 2025 listing of Aegis Vopak Terminals in India, which reduced Vopak’s stake but crystallised a higher valuation.

The year was not uniformly strong. Proportional revenue was flat at €1,916 million, and the third quarter showed EBITDA of €286.5 million, down from €294.1 million, as a weak dollar and divestments weighed. Chemical storage demand was soft throughout, reflecting the same pressure on European chemical producers that has reduced liquid-bulk throughput at the Port of Rotterdam. Oil storage in the Rotterdam hub was firmer, and gas was the growth engine: LNG throughput at Gate rose, the Colombian regasification terminal expanded, and the Canadian LPG export terminal progressed.

Capital allocation was the headline of the February 2026 results. Vopak announced shareholder distributions of about €1.7 billion through 2030, combining a dividend that rises at least 5 per cent per share each year, now paid semi-annually, and a multi-year share buyback of up to €500 million. The 2025 final dividend of €1.80 per share was 12.5 per cent higher than the year before. The first €100 million buyback tranche began on 26 February 2026 and was 45 per cent complete by late July. Proportional leverage ended the year at 2.60 times EBITDA, inside the 2.5 to 3.0 target range, with net interest-bearing debt of €2.70 billion.

The decision to return capital while investing €4 billion by 2030 rests on the operating cash flow: proportional operating free cash flow was €5.56 per share over the first nine months of 2025 and €3.88 per share in the first half of 2026, enough to fund both the dividend and most of the growth capex from internal resources.

What changed in the first half of 2026?

The first half of 2026 brought a modest decline in headline earnings, a raised full-year outlook and the largest single step yet into new energies: proportional EBITDA was €600.3 million against €615.3 million a year earlier, net profit €186.4 million against €318.6 million, but the 2025 comparison included the €111 million Indian listing gain, and the underlying performance was strong enough for management to lift 2026 EBITDA guidance to €1,180 to €1,220 million and operating free cash flow guidance to about €820 million.

The Middle East conflict, which closed the Strait of Hormuz for a period in 2026, helped storage demand. Oil and product price volatility raises the value of flexible storage in trading hubs such as Rotterdam, Singapore and Fujairah, and Vopak said in April that its portfolio should absorb the financial impact within the outlook range; by July the outlook had been raised. Proportional occupancy held at 91 per cent, and the operating cash return at 16.6 per cent in the first quarter.

The investments announced in the half changed the shape of the energy-transition portfolio. In May Vopak agreed to buy a majority of Green Energy Storage, a Dutch developer of grid-scale batteries, and on 1 July it completed the purchase of 79 per cent with an agreement to buy the remainder within two years. It took a final investment decision on GES’s 200 MW, 800 MWh battery at Oosterhout, with Greenchoice taking half the capacity under an eight-year tolling contract and commercial operation expected in the first half of 2028, and allocated capital to a second 150 MW, 600 MWh project at Veendam; the two together absorb €371 million. In June Vopak and Gasunie took a conditional investment decision to keep the EemsEnergyTerminal, the floating LNG import facility at Eemshaven that was built in 2022 to replace Russian gas, operating from 2028 to 2036 under contracts already signed with customers. In October the Port Botany terminal in Sydney received New South Wales government endorsement for an expansion to supply sustainable aviation fuel. Gate’s fourth LNG tank in Rotterdam was commissioned in October 2026.

Governance changed too. Helle Kristoffersen, a former TotalEnergies executive, and Roeland Baan, a former Aperam and Outokumpu chief executive, joined the supervisory board at an extraordinary meeting on 29 July 2026.

Where is the growth capital going?

Vopak’s growth capital is concentrated in three places: gas import and export terminals where it already has positions, industrial terminals attached to chemical plants in the Americas, and a small but rising share of energy-transition assets, most of them in the Netherlands. The table sets out the main projects and their status as of the third quarter of 2026.

The Dutch concentration is deliberate. Grid congestion in the Netherlands, which TenneT has warned will persist into the 2030s, makes grid-connected batteries valuable, and Vopak’s existing industrial sites already have grid connections and permits that a greenfield developer would wait years for. The company’s statement that the Oosterhout project is intended to balance the grid and reduce congestion is a direct response to that bottleneck. The batteries are also the first Vopak assets whose revenue comes from electricity markets rather than from storage contracts, which is a different risk profile, partly mitigated by the Greenchoice tolling agreement.

How does Vopak compare with its competitors?

Vopak’s closest listed competitors are Kinder Morgan and Enterprise Products in the United States, which are far larger but predominantly pipeline companies, and in independent storage the privately held Oiltanking, part of Germany’s Marquard & Bahls, the Belgian-Dutch group LBC Tank Terminals, and Singapore-based Horizon and Tankstore; among them Vopak has the broadest geographic footprint and the highest share of gas and industrial contracts, which carry longer terms and more stable pricing than oil trading hubs.

Its advantage is location. Vopak holds positions in the three largest oil and chemical trading hubs, Rotterdam, Houston and Singapore, plus Fujairah in the Gulf, and in gas import markets with structural growth, India, Colombia, Pakistan and Mexico. Its disadvantage is that storage is a mature business in which the main growth comes from new energy flows rather than from more oil, and new flows require customers who are themselves waiting for policy clarity. The company’s hydrogen ambitions in Rotterdam, including ammonia import capacity at the Maasvlakte, have produced studies and pilots but, as of 2026, no large final investment decision, because the importers of green hydrogen are waiting for the German and Dutch subsidy frameworks to settle.

Compared with the port authority and with Boskalis, its HAL stablemate, Vopak’s returns are higher and its political exposure lower. The Port of Rotterdam Authority must answer to public shareholders and to the city’s climate targets; Boskalis depends on government infrastructure spending. Vopak’s customers are private companies with their own storage needs, and its contracts are long. That is why HAL has held the stake for more than two decades and why the family office, as the Boskalis story explains, took the dredger private but left Vopak listed.

What role do HAL and the Van der Vorm family play?

HAL Holding is the dominant shareholder in Vopak and the reason the company has pursued a long-term strategy that a dispersed shareholder base might have resisted: with 51.4 per cent of the shares, HAL can block any takeover, approve any board, and has consistently supported capital spending over short-term distributions, although the 2026 shift to a €1.7 billion distribution plan shows that it also expects cash once investments mature. HAL, whose origins lie in the Holland America Line shipping company, is controlled by the Van der Vorm family with about 68 per cent of HAL Trust, and reported equity of €14.8 billion at the end of 2024.

HAL’s style is to hold large stakes in a small number of Dutch and European companies for decades and to intervene rarely. It took Boskalis private in 2022 when it concluded that public markets undervalued a cyclical dredger. It has held Vopak since the 1990s without ever bidding for the rest, which suggests it values the listing, both as a currency and as a discipline. HAL’s willingness to support the 2030 investment plan is why Vopak can commit €4 billion with a leverage ceiling of 3 times EBITDA without issuing equity; its other large positions, including 56 per cent of the electronics retailer Coolblue, whose founder is profiled in the Pieter Zwart story, show the same pattern of patient majority ownership.

For minority shareholders the arrangement has worked: Vopak has paid rising dividends, bought back shares and avoided the dilutive capital raises common among infrastructure companies in transition. The cost is that strategic direction is set by one shareholder and that a sale of the company to a strategic buyer or an infrastructure fund, which might unlock a premium, is unlikely while HAL is satisfied.

What can founders and investors learn from Vopak?

Vopak offers a model for any business whose core product is in long-term decline: use the cash from the old business to build the new one, sell assets early rather than late, and measure the transition in capital committed rather than in press releases. Four lessons follow.

First, sell while the asset still has a buyer. Vopak sold its European chemical terminals, the Korean terminal and the Barcelona terminal to infrastructure funds and local operators while occupancy was still reasonable, booking small losses in some cases rather than waiting for the assets to become unsellable. The discipline of taking a €15 million loss on Korea in 2025 is what makes the portfolio cleaner in 2026.

Second, fund the transition from operating cash flow, not from the balance sheet. The company’s €4 billion target is matched to operating free cash flow of about €800 million a year, and leverage has stayed between 2.5 and 3.0 times EBITDA throughout. Founders in capital-intensive sectors should note that the market has rewarded Vopak’s measured pace more than it would have rewarded a debt-funded dash into hydrogen that has not yet found customers.

Third, follow the customer, not the narrative. Vopak’s 2022 strategy talked about hydrogen and ammonia; its 2026 investments are in LNG extensions, LPG, pyrolysis oil, sustainable aviation fuel and batteries, because those are the products for which customers will sign long-term contracts today. The company’s stated priorities have not changed, but its capital has gone where the contracts are.

Fourth, a controlling shareholder with a long horizon is an asset if the strategy is sound and a liability if it is not. HAL’s patience has allowed Vopak to invest through the cycle, and the same patience has given Dutch financial institutions and family-controlled groups like Heineken their stability. Investors should check whether the controlling shareholder’s incentives align with theirs; in Vopak’s case, the 2026 distribution plan suggests they do.

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