Wavin Global

Wavin's story begins in 1950s Zwolle, the Netherlands, where company founder Johan Keller was director of WMO, the local water utility. Supplying a largely rural district and a few urban centres, the company's water supply reached its customers through a large network of mostly iron pipes. Before long, WMO found itself battling against serious pipe corrosion and a significant loss of water. Keller decided that something needed to be done urgently, and began looking into plastic pipes as a solution. Although plastic pipes were already available in the 1950s, Keller wanted them tailor-made for the supply of drinking water. Finding none on the market, he set to work in a small workshop in Zwolle, and, in 1953, succeeded in producing the first plastic pressure pipes for potable water with diameters of 100 mm. In 2006 Wavin entered the NYSE Euronext stock exchange in Amsterdam and was included in the Amsterdam Midcap index. Six years later, in 2012, Mexichem, leader in Latin America in plastic pipe systems and in the chemical and petrochemical industry, acquired Wavin, leading to a delisting.