CLEVELAND — Hospeco Brands Group, a full line manufacturer of cleaning and protection products to serve the janitorial, industrial supply, foodservice, healthcare and hospitality markets, has purchased Innocore of Ontario, Canada, the maker of Touch Point and Certainty Brands premoistened, non-woven, surface and personal wipes and other hand care products.
The merger complements HBG’s already-robust wipes offering and expands the company’s North American footprint in the wipes market. The merger of the two companies is effective immediately.
Certainty Brands is Canada’s industry leader in large format, ready-to-use, multi-surface disinfecting, sanitizing, personal-care, and specialty wipes. The same high-quality Innocore products are known to U.S. customers under the Touch Point brand. The merger will enable Hospeco’s customers to gain access to these high-quality formulations with broad brand recognition in both countries. It will also enable Innocore customers to gain access to Hospeco’s full line of personal care, cleaning, and protection products for sale to the away-from-home market.
“The addition of Innocore to Hospeco Brands Group provides us with a stronger Canadian infrastructure, which in turn allows us to better support our current Canadian distribution partners,” said Bill Hemann, EVP of Hospeco Brands Group. “As our north-of-the-border distribution shifts to Innocore’s Ontario base, our partners can look forward to reduced lead times, an expanded product offering, and resident support. It’s very exciting.”
Hospeco Brands Group will continue to market their Hospeco products while gaining access to the Certainty and Touch Point names in their respective markets, and the Innocore business unit will continue to operate under the Innocore name while having access to Hospeco’s products. Innocore’s full management team will continue to manage the business under the Hospeco Brands Group umbrella. Existing customers of both entities will continue to work with the sales and customer service teams to which they are already accustomed.
Innocore controls every aspect of manufacturing at two facilities totaling 82,000 square feet, with in-house converting, saturating, sealing, and packaging. Innocore’s cGMP manufacturing facility produces Health Canada, EPA, and FDA registered wipe products.
“Innocore is a perfect addition to our offering,” said Tom Friedl, CEO of the Hospeco Brands Group. “The business has been run with a set of core values that starts with ensuring the employees come first, something we feel is the genesis of Innocore’s incredibly positive customer experience. Certainty and Touch Point wiping solutions immediately become jewels in our product offering.”
“This is an unpassable opportunity to join with a company that shares our values and culture,” said Mark Harvey, president of Innocore. “Hospeco Brands Group already offers one of the broadest lines of general purpose and application-specific non-woven wiping solutions in the industry, and our merger catapults the organization to another plane. Our customers are going to love the breadth and depth of the broader Hospeco Brands Group product mix.”
