Ecolab makes 227M pounds of chemicals at Garyville plant | Business

Every month, up to 20 railcars, 500 tanker trucks and 2,000 freight shipments are loaded up with chemical products produced at Ecolab’s 58-acre plant in St. John the Baptist Parish.

Headed to destinations ranging from nearby chemical plants to international clients, the Minnesota-based company ships about 227 million pounds of finished products from the Garyville facility.

Some 800 in all, those products are used for water treatment, industrial chemical processes and the systems used in cool power plants and AI data centers, as well as in more familiar settings like the hospitality industry. 

Ecolab is the biggest U.S.-based player spanning the cleaning, sanitation and water management business. Analysts estimate it controls nearly 10% of a $165 billion global market. And about 10% of its products are only made in Louisiana.

The petrochemical giant and its subsidiaries have faced criticism from environmentalists and paid out more than $2 million in fines to environmental regulators for violations in other states, though it has a maintained relatively clean record at its Garyville plant.

Now, amid the rush to build massive data centers to support the AI industry,  Ecolab is positioned to profit from the growing demand for its specialized treatments for cooling water — both at the centers themselves and the power plants being built to electrify them.

“Those data centers are going to use a tremendous amount of water in their processes,” plant manager Chris Rogers said. “So the chemicals that we use allow for water to be used much more efficiently and effectively — and in environmentally friendly ways.” 

How it’s made

Chemicals manufactured at the Garyville facility include polymers used in wastewater treatment to help clump and remove solids, in paper processing to make more absorbent paper towels or stronger cardboard and to keep contaminants and corrosion from building up in machinery. 

The plant also produces biocides — chemicals used to kill bacteria and fungi — and salt-based chemicals. 

Water-oil blends, used to improve fuel quality and refinery efficiency, comprise about 40% of the Garyville plant’s output. Another 35% is made up of latex polymers and solution polymers for use in industrial wastewater treatment.

Raw materials arrive at the plant in bulk on railcars, though some arrive in smaller containers on box trucks, Rogers said. 

“The types of materials that we use are everything from monomer backbones that go into making polymers, to some polymers that are pre-produced that we blend and mix with our polymers,” he said. “There are other salts and additive chemicals that we use to perfect our product.”

Depending on the type of product being made, those raw materials are taken to either reactors or blenders, which can be as small as a couple hundred gallons or as large as several thousand gallons.

Some of its products are manufactured through a continuous reaction process, which involves constantly feeding materials into the reactor as products flow out, Rogers explained.

“As long as we want to run it, as long as we have a need for that material, we could run for days, weeks, even months straight, where you’re putting raw materials into the process and taking finished goods out,” he said.

Other products made at the plant are produced in batches, which can take anywhere from minutes to three days.

Neighbors among clients

The Garyville plant was built in 1970 by Nalco Water, which became a subsidiary of Minnesota-based publicly traded Ecolab in 2011. The following year, the new owners expanded the facility with a 300,000-square-foot polymer production facility. 

Today, Ecolab has 110 manufacturing centers, 48,000 employees and operates across 170 countries and 40 different industries. In 2024, the publicly traded company earned $2.1 billion in profits on $15.7 billion in sales.

Of its 1,400 customers, more than half are based between Alabama and Texas, with nearly 300 in Louisiana.

“We’ve got another facility next door to us that we do business with,” Rogers said. “We’ve got facilities down the road that we do business with.”

The plant’s location along the Mississippi River affords it a huge advantage, he added.

“We pull the industrial water we use out of the Mississippi River, clean that water for usage within our facility. And then, once we use it in our facility, we clean it again before we put it back into the Mississippi,” he said.

Since 2018, the Garyville facility has maintained certification from the Alliance for Water Stewardship, an independent nonprofit made up of businesses, governmental, environmental and academic institutions. The certification means the plant has met standards for sustainable water management — reducing water use, ensuring water quality and protecting local watersheds. 

Cooling the boom

The rapid pace of growth in the AI data center sector — with $46 billion in construction spending projected for the year — means more potential customers for Ecolab’s products that prevent scale and other residue from building up on the cooling equipment.

“When you prevent that, it allows for less electricity to be used to circulate and re-cool that cooling water,” Rogers said. “It also allows for that water to be used more efficiently itself.” 

Large data centers can go through several millions of gallons of water every day, and the massive Meta facility being built in Richland Parish is projected to use even more, raising concerns among environmentalists about the impact on the area’s water supply.

Cooling systems require make-up water to replace what escapes through evaporation and exhaust, and chemicals produced at the Garyville plant reduce the amount of replacement water needed. 

Looking to the future, Ecolab officials expect the AI boom will continue to be big business for the company. This month, they announced plans to sell an integrated “cooling as a service” program that continuously checks the health and temperature of cooling liquid in real time.

“Data centers are at the heart of an AI-driven future, and their cooling needs are becoming increasingly complex,” Josh Magnuson, executive vice president and general manager for Ecolab’s Global Water Solutions sector, said in a statement. “Cooling as a Service is not just a platform but will be a dynamic hub that integrates cooling and power infrastructure to provide data center operators with the insights to achieve best-in-class performance.”