Core Business
RWE is one of Europe's leading electricity and gas companies and among Europe’s five largest utilities. The Group, founded in 1898, is active in the generation and transmission as well as the sale and trading of electricity and gas. 63,000 employees supply 20 million customers with electricity and also 10 million customers with gas. In fiscal year 2007, the Group recorded € 42.55 billion in revenue.
RWE Supply & Trading unites RWE’s successful wholesale trading activities with the long-term gas procurement, structuring and optimisation business. Thus RWE Supply & Trading is responsible for the economic optimisation of the entire non-regulated gas business of the RWE Group. This entails gas procurement, transport, incl. LNG and storage. The company is engaging in pipeline projects and intensifying its business relationships with pipeline gas suppliers as well as with LNG suppliers. RWE Group currently handles a 40 billion m3 (bcm) per year gas supply portfolio in Europe, operates gas pipelines of more than 23,000 km in length and gas storages with a capacity of 6.1 bcm.
RWE Supply & Trading is also the interface between the RWE Group and the global wholesale markets for energy and energy-related raw materials. In this function the company uses its extensive skill and experience for a market based commercial optimization of the Group’s assets as well as for proprietary trading activities.
All of the companies’ activities are embedded in and are based on a state-of-the art risk management environment enabling to report and manage the primary and secondary energy price risks as well as credit risks resulting from transactions in the energy wholesale markets. These skill sets and the risk management infrastructure are used throughout the RWE Group and are also available to selected customers.
The core asset of the company is its people, which come from about 30 different nations. This reflects not only a diversity of nationalities but also diversity of cultures, of experiences and approaches. Based on this diversity RWE Supply & Trading is able to create additional value from the combination of real and contractual assets in combination with the skills and talents of its people. This allows the company to compete successfully in the market, create value for its shareholders and contribute to the welfare of society by generating tax income for the host governments in the countries where RWE Supply & Trading operates. This is not only achieved thought the purchasing power of its own staff, but also through sponsoring the education of young adults. This approach has lead to RWE Supply & Trading being one of Europe’s leading energy trading houses. RWE Supply & Trading’s aim is to stay an industry leader.
Supply:
RWE Supply & Trading functions as a service provider, taking care of the procurement of fuels for affiliated RWE companies. The company uses the full range of possibilities available from the fulfilment and optimisation of long-term delivery contracts while simultaneously using the growing number of options created through the increasing liquidity and the convergence of wholesale energy commodities markets in Europe. All raw materials which are needed for power and heat production, especially gas, coal and oil, belong to the core business of RWE Supply & Trading. The highly complex job of asset optimisation also includes the challenges posed by logistics and transportation.
This leaves the other RWE companies free to concentrate on their core skills such as the development of oil and gas reserves, power production or energy sales.
Trading:
The wholesale trading activities of RWE Supply & Trading currently include the products power, gas, coal, oil and CO2 certificates, as well as the renewable ernergy for biomass. Metals are also traded by RWE Supply & Trading for the purposes of risk mitigation.
For all of these products, the company has acquired extensive know-how in the areas of physical and derivatives trading for both the spot and futures markets. The company is one of the leading trading companies in Europe.
The company’s success in the trading business is based on a well-founded knowledge of the markets, professional organisation, the highest standards in risk evaluation and hedging as well as its highly qualified employees. The company’s traders work together closely with specialist in market analysis, product development, meteorology and other areas.
RWE Trading Services, a subsidiary of RWE Supply & Trading, offers additional energy-related financial services such as brokerage, investment counselling and acquisition services. This enables clients, for example, to use innovative financial products to protect themselves against the risks associated with physical purchase contracts.
RWE Supply & Trading takes a holistic view of the markets, the commodities and their growing convergence and correlations. With this business model RWE Supply & Trading embodies the pinnacle of European asset-backed energy trading.
