Cleveland, Ohio-based Hospeco Brands announced Feb. 24 that it has purchased Ontario, Canada-based Innocure — a manufacturer of Touch Point and Certainty Brands premoistened, non-woven, surface and personal wipes and other hand care products.

Hospeco said the deal complements its already-robust wipes offering and expands the manufacturer’s North American footprint in that market.

The company noted that Certainty Brands is a leading Canadian brand of large format, ready-to-use, multi-surface disinfecting, sanitizing, personal-care and speciality wipes and that the same Innocore products are known to U.S. customers under the Touch Point brand.

“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 its 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,” added 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.”