Industry overview
The Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities sector across Belgium comprises approximately 1,540 enterprises employing about 25,388 people and generating €13.0 bn in net turnover in 2022. The average enterprise size is 17 employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.
Profitability
With a robust operating margin of 16.9% of revenue in 2022, the sector reports €2.2 bn of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.
Cost structure
Cost of revenue dominates the Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities P&L at 73.8% of turnover, reflecting the high material and input content of activities in this sector. Personnel costs account for 14.1%, with energy purchases adding 3.5%. Procurement efficiency and contract management are therefore the two strongest profit levers for operators in this segment.
Productivity & human capital
Each employee in the Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities sector generates approximately €492,000 of net turnover against a labour cost of €49,000, yielding a productivity-to-cost ratio of 10.0. Value added per employee stands at €158,000 This is a headline figure to compare against individual firm performance when judging whether headcount is creating proportional value.
Trend & trajectory
Over the period 2008 to 2022 the operating margin moved from 13.4% to 16.9% (+3.5 percentage points), an encouraging upward trajectory. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.