Hain Celestial extends its personal care presence

The company stressed that the acquisition includes Helene, Batherapy and Footherapy brands - all key niche health and personal care brands that are sold throughout the North American market and that should provide the company with further opportunity for brand expansion.

Based in New York, Para Labs has been in business since 1930 and has developed a range of health and personal care products for the skin and hair care sector, together with more targeted products for bath and foot care segments that amount to a total of over 100 products. It has a sales turnover of €20 a year.

In line with Hain Celestial's positioning as a supplier of natural and organic-based personal care products, the majority of Para Labs' product formulations are derived from natural ingredients.

Hain Celestial, which recently announced a 10 per cent increase in its quarterly sales and is hoping to achieve 2006 sales of $680m, says that a main contributor to its recent growth has been the strength of its Jason personal care division.

The Jason division includes the Zia premium skin care and Earth's Best baby body range care, which have featured prominently amongst the fast-growing natural health and personal care products category.

The terms of the acquisition, which was finalised on March 3, were not disclosed, but Hain Celestial did say that it expected the transaction would be accretive to its earnings during its fiscal year 2007.

"The acquisition of these brands brings us closer to our objective to build a $100 million Personal Care business through internal growth and acquisitions, as this is our third acquisition in the personal care products category since June 2004,"​ said Irwin Simon, Hain Celestial CEO.

"The distribution of these brands in chain drug and mass channels will enable us to extend our other products in those channels with our Jason, Zia and Earth's Best brands."​Simon also announced that the Para Labs management team under Andrew Jacobson would be joining the group in executive positions for the Personal Care division.

Last year Jason Jason capitalized on its Earth's Best brand to introduce Earth's Best Baby Body Care, a line of six hypo-allergenic formulas using natural and organic ingredients, due to be launched on the US and UK markets.