Anglian Water is celebrating today after receiving an impressive four awards, and one highly commended nomination, at the prestigious Water Industry Awards last night in Birmingham.
The Water Industry Awards recognise the very best practice from the frontline of the UK water sector with a special focus on innovation and its applicability to the wider industry. Entries are rigorously assessed by an esteemed panel of industry experts, who are looking for evidence of tangible benefits – to customers, to the environment, and to companies themselves.
For the third year in a row, Anglian Water won the Net Zero Carbon Initiative of the Year Award, this time for the launch of its £300 million sustainability-linked bond, in partnership with Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, ING, JP Morgan and Lloyds Bank. In a water company world first, the bond ties the rate of interest paid to the company’s delivery of its carbon reduction commitments.
Anglian Water was named as the winner of Drinking Water Initiative of the Year for its innovative Slug It Out programme. The programme has achieved a 98 per cent reduction in the pesticide metaldehyde in drinking water across the region, through an engagement programme which saw 100 per cent of farmers in targeted areas get involved.
The company was also awarded the inaugural Groundbreaker Award for its Ruthamford resilience network at Grafham, Rutland and Pitsford reservoirs. The project is an industry first, redirecting the direction of flow along a 26km section of trunk main. This initiative builds resilience and flexible supplies to nearly 900,000 customers served by the company’s Grafham Water reservoir, delivering the project with a 61 per cent carbon reduction and at lower cost to customers than the traditional solution of building a new pipeline.
In collaboration with its partner Samotics, Anglian Water also scooped the Asset Management Initiative of the Year award for its asset health monitoring system SAM4. The solution, built by Netherlands-based technology company Samotics, allows Anglian Water to remotely monitor its water and water recycling assets. This helps prevent unplanned interruptions to supply for customers, save money on customers’ bills by reducing maintenance costs, and save energy.
Twenty-three-year-old Craig Hopkinson, a Sustainability Manager for Anglian Water’s Strategic Pipeline Alliance, was also highly commended in the Rising Star of the Year category at the ceremony.
Overall, the company was shortlisted for a total of 13 awards for 2022.
Peter Simpson, Chief Executive of Anglian Water, said following the ceremony, “These wins are a testament to the hard work of our people and partners to deliver forward-thinking, innovative initiatives and projects to the region we serve. We’re absolutely delighted to be named as a leader by a jury of our peers for our approach to the net zero challenge, for driving high standards of drinking water quality, and for how we’ve brought groundbreaking approaches and the latest artificial intelligence technology to the challenges of managing our assets and securing water supplies for the East of England.”