Nalco

Nalco Water’s official history says the business began in 1928 as National Aluminate Corporation, created by the merger of Chicago Chemical Company and Aluminate Sales Corporation. Both sold sodium aluminate for water treatment, but one focused mainly on municipalities and industrial boiler feedwater while the other served railroads and steam locomotives. In 1929, National Aluminate added Visco Products to sell sodium aluminate for oil-well drilling mud, and in 1959 the company adopted the Nalco Chemical Company name as its activities broadened. [1]

The business later developed a stronger industrial research and service footprint. Ecolab’s history records that Nalco opened a technical center in Naperville in 1979, moved its corporate headquarters there in 1986, and was acquired by Suez in 1999 before returning to public trading in 2004. Those milestones describe Nalco as a specialist water-and-process business whose chemistry, testing and customer-site support expanded beyond its original inorganic water-treatment base. [1]

Ecolab completed its merger with Nalco Holding Company on December 1, 2011. Today Ecolab presents Nalco Water as a global water and process-management business that helps industrial customers reduce water, energy and other resource consumption, improve air quality, minimize releases, and increase productivity and product performance. Nalco Water’s current headquarters and research facility remains at 1601 West Diehl Road in Naperville, Illinois, so the historic entity is best understood as an Ecolab operating business rather than a separate public company. [2] [3]