Water industry regulator Ofwat has granted authorisations for three more water and sewerage retail licences.

Leading beverage manufacturers and pub operators Heineken UK and Stonegate Pub Company Ltd have both been granted licences, together with Basingstoke-headquartered Berendsen UK which provides textile maintenance services across the UK.

In 2017 Heineken, the name behind drinks brands such as Strongbow, Bulmers, Heineken®, Foster's, Kronenbourg 1664 and Desperados, launched its global water programme, “Every Drop”. Since 2008, it has lowered its water use by 21% and has invested in more efficient equipment, investing over £100 million into modernising its Manchester and Hereford sites and installing modern, efficient equipment. It is also making its existing equipment more efficient and finding new ways of doing things to reduce water use both at its sites and at the consumer level.

Stonegate operate over 690 pubs and bars across the UK, within a wide variety of formats, from community and high-street pubs, through branded bars, to country inns and late night venues.

Textile services provider Berendsen provides its services through three key divisions of the business:

• Sterile instrument and barrier fabric cleaning
• Healthcare and Hospitality industry laundry services
• Workwear laundry services

The majority of its 32 sites operate as industrial laundries whilst four sites operate as sterile instrument sites. All of its operations require large volumes of water and produce large volumes of trade effluent. However, it has been very active in ensuring that its sites operate efficiently and all of the sites now have some form of water reclaim system in place. The firm holds the Carbon Trust Water Standard, alongside the Carbon Trust Standard.

All of the companies will work in partnership with Waterscan Ltd to take on the role and responsibilities for the retail functions including meter reading, CMOS transactions, wholesaler management and finding further water efficiency savings.

Heineken and Stonegate already have existing partnerships in place with Waterscan, while Berendsen is a new contract win for the specialist water management company.