Royal Vopak N.V. () is a Dutch independent multinational company that stores and handles products ranging from chemicals, oil, gases and LNG to biofuels and vegoils. Its purpose is to "Store vital products with care", which derives from the products Vopak stores and how they are being stored The company was created by the merger of Van Ommeren and Pakhoed in 1999. In 2002, the distribution of oil and natural gas related products was split off; a new company Univar was created for that purpose. The head office is located in Rotterdam. Vopak is listed on Euronext Amsterdam. Merger In 1998 the companies Royal Pakhoed nv and Royal van Ommeren nv decided to merge. Both companies were offering storage services for oil, petrochemical products, vegetable oils etc. Both companies were also active on the market of shipping (tankers) and other logistical services. Besides their overlapping activities Van Ommeren offered heavy-goods transport via Dockwise and Pakhoed offered distribution services for chemical products via the company Univar. The European Commission ruled that the merger would give the combined company too much market power in storage services in the Antwerp-Rotterdam-Amsterdam (ARA)-area, on which made the offer to sell parts of their storage-tank capacity. The EC ruled this as insufficient and the merger was canceled. Renewed negotiations resulted in the combination selling the Pakhoed terminals in Pernis and Botlek as well as van Ommeren selling their stake in Gamatext in the Port of Antwerp. This new offer convinced the EC to approve the merger and in 1999 it was publicly announced On 15 April 2000 Vopak announced that they sold their 1,5 million m³ Botlek terminal to Norwegian competitor Odfjell.<ref name="NT">[http://www.nieuwsbladtransport.nl/Archive/Article/tabid/409/ArchiveArticleID/62544/ArticleName/BotlekterminalVopaknaarOdfjell/Default.aspx Nieuwsblad Transport, Botlek-terminal Vopak sold to Odfjell, 15 April, 2000] (Dutch), visited: 2 September 2013</ref> Odfjell had already terminals in Houston, China and South America. The entire workforce of 260 people also moved to Odfjell. Earlier that year Vopak had already sold its stake in the Gamatex terminal in Antwerp to the American partner GATX Early in 2002 the CEO Ton Spoor left with immediate effect, officially because of 'personal reasons', but it was rumoured that the break of trust between him and the company was caused by the €150 million write-off in 2001 caused by a failed attempt to introduce a pan-European IT system. Spoor was succeeded by Gary Pruitt. The new combined company Vopak has a difficult start: there is only