Chemical service company, Jacam Catalyst, has a strong national presence with offices in more than fifty locations throughout the country, with corporate headquarters and manufacturing facilities located in Texas and Kansas. This subsidiary of CES Energy Solutions is the second-largest supplier in the Permian, Mid-Continent, and Rockies production basins and the third-largest oilfield production chemical company in the entire United States.
The company’s mission is straightforward and customer-focused. The team’s commitment to an effective chemical application means always going the extra mile. “It’s more than just trying to create a product,” summarizes Director of Laboratory and Research and Development Services Justin Disney. “We are providing a service associated with that product.”
By solving customers’ problems, the team creates a mutually beneficial situation. “The bottom line is, if our customers don’t make money, then we won’t make money,” Disney says. “And so our goal is to try to understand what issues our customers have, whether or not we can solve them chemically or whether there are other options for solving their problems and then trying to come up with the best solution.”
The team’s commitment does not stop there; they have to prove the solution works as intended. “How do we show that value by validating that our products are working or that our customer is getting the value that we hope they’re getting?” Disney asks. “We do lots of testing, a lot of analytical work, and we invest very, very heavily in our R&D and technical capabilities to make sure that we are subject matter experts, not only on our products but also on our customers’ equipment. Many times they rely very heavily on us to be experts on what goes on with their equipment and to help them understand their failures and things like that.”
Jacam Catalyst nurtures employee talent to ensure they deliver the best solution to customers. “Our company culture tries very hard to unleash the potential in our employees,” Disney says. “We do have some corporate controls and things like that but we try hard not to stifle ingenuity and [not to] stifle creative thinking.”
The company’s relatively flat organizational structure helps make this possible by avoiding “layers and layers of bureaucracy,” which can “stifle people’s ability to get things accomplished,” he says. “So I think that people will find that it’s very refreshing here. If you need resources, if you need help, you don’t have to go through eight levels of management to try to get those resources. We can rapidly respond to our customers’ needs.”
Safety is another important part of the company culture. Jacam Catalyst makes sure that all employees have the opportunity to participate in and take ownership of the responsibilities associated with a healthy and safe workplace. The company provides all necessary training and continually invests in new safety programs, updated training classes, and new resources to reach the company goal of an accident-free workplace. The management actively leads each project and process with the specific goal of protecting the health and safety of all involved and of minimizing the impact on the environment.
Jacam Catalyst has enjoyed dramatic growth recently. The current company is a combination of three chemical companies that were acquired at different times to create one unified business. Each acquisition was carefully chosen based on where it was located and what value it would bring to the organization as a whole. Then, after the acquisition, the team made sure to keep that company’s strengths intact.
“We tried very hard, when we merged, to look at best practices for each company and then take the best of each, rather than be a merger of unequals,” Disney says. “Due to that, we’ve had a lot of success because we can capitalize on all the different products in our product portfolio, all the different technical resources we have, and try to pool all that collective knowledge and apply it as needed for each individual field. I think that that’s been very successful because it’s allowed us to take that shared collective knowledge and try to think differently in each particular region we’re located.”
The company’s expansion has been so successful that Jacam Catalyst has had to build a brand new, state-of-the-art laboratory to keep up with all the work. In the past, the team has added to its laboratory located in Texas’s Permian Basin, but eventually, the rapid growth required a more substantial solution.
“We eventually exceeded the reasonable capabilities of our existing infrastructure,” Disney says. In 2020, it broke ground on a brand new facility “that was designed from scratch with pure intent as a first-class laboratory environment.” At 11,000 square feet, “It’s the largest laboratory in the Permian Basin.”
This location is key because it allows the team to bring their technology and expertise to the field as rapidly as possible. “By having our resources where the oil field is… we can interact with our customers in a very timely manner versus trying to send something to a major metropolitan area,” Disney points out.
The company is eager to continue expanding. “We are always looking to grow into new shale plays where our customers are,” he says. “We are probably number three or number four in production chemicals in North America, and we think that there are still a lot of opportunities to grow.” He sees a particular advantage in cultivating prospects where the company already enjoys a solid presence. “We try very hard to capitalize on areas we’re already in. There are a lot of opportunities.”
To keep growing, the company has recognized the need to expand not just its presence but its brand as well. “One of the issues, the challenges we always face, is we don’t necessarily have the name recognition based on our size,” Disney explains. “It’s because we started as fairly regional companies. Most people don’t realize that we have a national presence, and I think that’s where we’re trying to get more and more education to our potential customers. We are a national chemical service company, and we are present at all the major oil fields throughout the U.S.”
With so much growth and success under the company’s belt, it is only a matter of time before the name achieves the recognition it deserves.
