How Did Ecolab Acquire Nalco

Ecolab, Inc has been in business since 1923. The company started out to clean carpets in hotel rooms rather than the hotel shutting down the room while the carpets were sent out to be cleaned. From there the company expanded the cleaning supplies, and also expanding into Canada and Europe. In 1957, Ecolab (known as Economics Laboratory) went public. In 1984, Ecolab made their first acquisition and expanded their business into pest control. Economics Laboratory changed their name to Ecolab, Inc in 1986. During the 1990’s, Ecolab continued to grow and acquire other businesses. Some of the areas Ecolab provides cleaning and sanitizing products are hospitality, foodservice, food and beverage markets, and healthcare. In 2011, Ecolab acquired Nalco (Milestones, n.d.). The latest acquisition was Champion Technologies

Nalco is a company that specializes in helping their customers reduce energy, water, and other resource consumption and help protect the environment by producing less waste and pollution. Ecolab has a water, energy, and waste division, but wanted an opportunity to create more growth in the division. Ecolab was starting to realize that their customers use a lot water, because of most of the markets they are in, there is a lot of cleaning and sanitizing. Ecolab and Nalco met to discuss different possibilities in working together. It took seven month of meetings between Ecolab and Nalco to determine the best option was for the two companies to merge. The board of directors for each company approved unanimously (Chon & Das, 2011). The main reason for the merger for Ecolab was the ability to enter into new markets. Even though they had a stake in the energy, water, and waste division, using Nalco’s experience and technologies to expand into new and larger markets. Nalco had the same thought about entering into markets they were not currently in (Fehrenback,