St. Paul-based Ecolab acquires Georgia firm with $40M in sales

Ecolab Inc. has acquired the small Georgia-based food-safety and cleaning-products firm Chemstar Corp.

Terms of the transaction announced Monday were not disclosed.

The deal gives Ecolab, the $14.7 billion St. Paul-based filtration and cleaning chemicals giant, a small manufacturing firm with $40 million in annual revenue.

Chemstar is best known for its Sterilox Fresh line of products and its focus on food safety, cleaning and sanitizing solutions for grocery, floral and food retail markets.

Chemstar serves customers in the U.S. and Canada and is expected to be a solid fit with Ecolab, which specializes in water filtration, food safety products, cleaning and sanitizing chemicals and services for hotels, restaurants, breweries, dairies and refineries around the globe.

"Chemstar's food safety solutions align well with our existing offerings and will enhance and broaden our ability to meet the needs of our food retail customers," Bobby Mendez, Ecolab's president of global and specialty products, said in a statement.

Ecolab's stock ended the day Monday down less than 1% at $204.74 a share.

In December 2018, Ecolab announced it would acquire the England-based food-hygiene and cleaning-products firm Holchem Group Limited for an undisclosed price. This year so far, the company also has paid about $178 million for the U.K. health care sanitation firm Bioquell PLC and bought a small Swiss online training firm for an undisclosed price.

Ecolab announced also announced it will spin off its $2.4 billion oil drilling or "upstream energy" business into a separate company in mid 2020.