St. Paul, MN
www.ecolab.com
Sales: $5.1 billion

Sales: $5.1 billion for institutional products. Corporate sales: $14.6 billion.

Key Personnel: Douglas M. Baker, chairman and chief executive officer; Christophe Beck, president and chief operating officer; Daniel J. Schmechel, chief financial officer and treasurer; Nicholas Alfano, executive vice president and general manager, global food and beverage; Arjan Boogaards, senior vice president and president, Middle East and Africa; Darrel Brown, executive vice president and president, global industrial; Jerome Charton, executive vice president and president, Europe; Greg Cook, senior vice president and president, Latin America; Michael A. Hickey, executive vice president, special initiatives; Timothy P. Mulhere, executive vice president and president, global institutional; Gergely (GG) Sved, senior vice president and general manager, global healthcare; Andreas Weilinghoff, executive vice president, global textile care; Jill Wyant, executive vice president and president, global regions and global healthcare; Sean Toohey, executive vice president, Asia Pacific; Connell Zhang, executive vice president and president, greater China.

Major Products: Cleaning and sanitizing products and services for the industrial and institutional markets.

New Products: AdvaCare Disinfectant, Aquanomic 2.0 Low-Temp Solid Laundry Program, Refined Knowledge powered by Ecolab 3D, Purate technology line, Ecolab Smart Water Navigator, LegionGuard LG25, Laundry Detergents Plus and Ultra.

Comments: Corporate sales rose 6% last year to $14.7 billion. Sales of institutional cleaning products, which account for 35% of Ecolab’s total sales, increased 5%. The company noted that global lodging demand continued to show moderate growth, while global full-service restaurant traffic remained soft.

Ecolab has made several acquisitions in the past 12 months. In January, Ecolab acquired Bioquell PLC, a leading provider of hydrogen peroxide vapor bio-decontamination systems and services for the life sciences and healthcare industries. Bioquell’s expertise in bio-decontamination and deep-clean utilizing vaporized hydrogen peroxide technologies complements Ecolab’s daily cleaning and disinfection offerings for cleanrooms and other high-grade environments.

In February, Ecolab purchased Lobster Ink, a provider of end-to-end online customer training solutions. Sales for Lobster Ink in 2018 were approximately $24 million. This acquisition combined Lobster Ink’s customer training capabilities and digital platform with Ecolab’s expertise in food safety, hygiene, water management and public and planet health.

In 2018, Nalco Champion, an Ecolab company, developed an experiment that studied bacterial biofilm in the microgravity environment on the International Space Station. The 40-day experiment was designed to help researchers understand new techniques to mitigate corrosion in oil and gas equipment.

This year, Ecolab will spin off its Upstream energy businesses as a stand-alone publicly-traded company. The Upstream energy business currently operates within Ecolab’s energy segment and consists of the oil field chemicals production business and the WellChem drilling and well completion chemistry business. Upon completion of the spin-off, the Upstream Energy business will be a market-leading pure-play global provider of oil and gas production, drilling and completion product and service solutions.

This year, as part of its commitment to diversity and inclusion, Ecolab joined the Human Rights Campaign’s Business Coalition for the Equality Act. Introduced to the US House of Representatives in March, the Equality Act would amend existing civil rights laws, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This is only the most recent example of Ecolab’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. In recent years, the company also has signed on to the CEO Action Pledge for Diversity and Inclusion, offered education for its employees on unconscious bias, established an Executive Diversity & Inclusion Council and increased the size and reach of its Employee Resource Groups.

For the first quarter of 2019, corporate sales rose 1% to $3.5 billion. CEO Doug Baker noted that institutional sales were modestly softer than expected as the faster exit from low margin business and an inventory reduction by distributors impacted first quarter sales. Still, the company expects institutional results to strengthen through the year.

As part of World Food Safety Day on June 7, Ecolab launched the Food Safety Culture Assessment, a tool to help measure and advance food safety behaviors and the overall food safety culture within food retail organizations. The assessment is a series of easy-to-read and understand questions on the key elements of an effective food safety culture. It only takes minutes to complete, and the results help identify trends based on unique attributes important to a company.