Cleaning, food safety and infection prevention firm Ecolab is to push into the energy efficiency market after announcing it is to splash out $210m to acquire Ecovation, a company specialising in systems that clean water used in food and beverage plants.

Ecovation's systems take waste water from production facilities and use bacteria to process the effluent into methane without the use of processing pools. The company's Mobilised Film Technology uses a material to which bacteria can attach in much higher numbers than pool-based systems, making it possible to clean more waste water in a smaller area.

The methane can then be converted into energy that can be reused in the plant, leading to energy savings of 30 per cent or more in many plants, according to Ecolab spokesperson Michael Monahan.

The amount of methane produced depends on the nature of the plant, he added. Dairy processing plants tend to produce more than those in other beverage plants, for example.

Monahan said that the technology can also deliver significant cost savings for food and beverage firms, which currently tend to use large pools of water outside their plants to clean waste water. "That involves a significant allotment of real estate and can be costly for that reason," he explained. " Plus, plants may have urban encroachment and may not have space available."

The Ecovation's systems, which take on average around nine months to design and install, were traditionally provided under a lease financing arrangement. Ecolab said it will sell off $40m in leasing deliverables, making the effective purchase price around $170m.