The process was developed at Bergvik, Sweden, from 1871 to 1874, In 1879, he emigrated to England, and opened the Ekman Pulp and Paper Company mill in Northfleet, Kent near the mouth of the Thames River in 1886.

He was also a consulting engineer and helped establish mills in Lachendorf, Celle, Germany, Dieppe, France, Rumford, Rhode Island, St. Petersburg, Russia, Corfu and Italy.

After contracting malaria in French Guiana and losing a lawsuit on pollution of a Northfleet limestone quarry, he died bankrupt in Gravesend, Kent.

He graduated in June, 1868 with first class honors, then worked for two years for the wine processor Liljeholmens Vinfabriks Aktiebolag, on Svartmangatan, Stockholm.

A similar sulfite process had been invented by Benjamin Chew Tilghman in 1867 in Philadelphia, but he was unable to put it into commercial production.

Ekman lived with the Sayles family in Pawtucket, Rhode Island[12] while working on Charles W. Wheelwright's Richmond Paper Co. mill at Rumford starting in 1884.

Ekman traveled extensively helping to construct mills in France, Italy, Russia, and Germany, as well as searching for new raw material that might be used in paper making.

He experimented with sugar cane, straw, aspen, birch, sycamore, esparto grass, linen, and hemp to provide paper pulp.