Annual Report 2010 - AdP

Through its shared services unit, the group aims to foster concerted access to the markets, integrate resources and propagate
accumulated experiences throughout the group.
By contributing to the management of the country’s available resources, the implementation of government policies and the
achievement of national objectives in the environmental area, the AdP Group plays a structural role in the sector.
The nature, size and execution period of the capital-intensive projects with long-term returns in which the AdP Group is involved
present a particularly demanding, but critically important, challenge in terms of the structural role these projects play at a national
level and in the management of the country’s available resources.
AdP’s future development rests on the growth and profitability of its businesses, a balanced portfolio of assets and an effective group
structure that capitalises on synergies resulting from the integrated management of resources, experience and accumulated know-how.
1.3 Level of Compliance with Objectives
In January 2009, Joint Ministerial Order no. 6008/2009, of 23 January, established the following guidelines for the 2008-2010
management mandate:
1) AdP should implement public policies and contribute towards attaining the national objectives for the sector through the
implementation of the measures defined under PEAASAR, PERSU and ENEAPAI so as to attain the results therein contained.
2) AdP should work to ensure contractual compliance in terms of service provision in the best possible conditions of quality and
price in order to promote improvements to economic, environmental and energy efficiencies across group companies.
3) AdP should ensure the economic and financial sustainability of the operations in which it participates and bringing about the
correction of contractual imbalances.
In accordance with these recommendations, AdP proceeded with the business restructuring of its portfolio of holdings, consolidating
and concentrating its core business activity: the management of water, sanitation and waste multi-municipal systems in Portugal.
Throughout the mandate now at an end, continuity was given to investment plans designed to attain the service standards set down
in the different strategic plans (raising water quality levels, service coverage levels and reliability), while simultaneously developing
procedures for expanding the existing multi-municipal systems to municipalities expressing such interest and endowing greater scale
to companies while reducing operational costs.
These orientations were put into practice by extending systems to new local authorities, carrying out investments in more advanced
treatment practices, merging systems in order to generate economies of scale and entering into partnerships with municipalities for
downstream services.
As regards the Water Business Unit - Production and Purification companies, the strategic lines of orientation are based upon
achieving the objectives defined under the auspices of PEAASAR I and demonstrated in the construction of the infrastructures
necessary to improve the scope of national coverage and implementing the public services able to reliably meet, in terms of both
quantity and quality, the water supply needs of 95% of the population and 90% in terms of drainage and wastewater treatment. This
thus represents an active contribution towards economic and social development furthermore based upon promoting the quality
of life of populations and significantly improving the prevailing quality of the environment.
With the approval of PEAASAR II in late 2006, new challenges were posed to supply and sanitation management companies, and
responsibility was given to the AdP Group, as a business group with exclusively public capital, to serve as the instrument for the
implementation and leveraging of public policies in the field of water supply and wastewater sanitation.
Establishing partnerships for the organisation of municipal systems was the objective underlying the protocols signed with a vast range
of municipalities for the development of downstream systems for water supply and wastewater sanitation. They resulted in a set of
studies, carried out in 2007 and 2008, specifically involving the initial drafting of Directive Plans and covering 193 mainland municipalities.
This was an exhaustive task, involving three consortia and twenty planners and accounting for total investment of around € 10 million.
Even while taking into consideration the flexibility of the management model set out in Decree Law no. 90/2009, of 9 April, and the
economies of scale generated by an integrated model of appropriate size, progress in talks with municipalities proved to be dependent,