Abstract The coagulation efficiency of novel coagulant aluminium formate was studied in the treatment of highly contaminated effluent from a styrene butadiene latex manufacturing plant. The coagulation behaviour of the aluminium formate was compared to the behaviour of the commonly used polyaluminium chloride and aluminium sulphate. The effects of the coagulant type and dose and coagulation pH on the treatment efficiency were studied as well as the role of polyacrylamide coagulant aid. Floc separation was done using three different methods sedimentation, filtration and centrifugation. Their functionality was evaluated as part of the coagulation performance studies. Good purification results were obtained with all of the tested coagulants, the lowest residual turbidities achieved being 0.7 NTU with aluminium formate, 1.4 NTU with polyaluminium chloride and 0.7 NTU with aluminium sulphate. It was also observed that aluminium formate is as effective as commercial coagulants and is thus a potential novel coagulant chemical due to its less harmful and biodegradable counter anion. When using only aluminium coagulants, flocs were found to be too fine to be removed by sedimentation but they could be effectively removed by filtration or centrifugation. The use of polyacrylamide was found to be useful in the sense that it enables the separation of flocs by simple sedimentation because the floc size is significantly increased. In this study new knowledge about the coagulation behaviour of highly contaminated effluent from latex manufacturing was gained and aluminium formate was proved to be promising coagulant also in industrial effluent treatment.