Mar 7, 2022   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Vantage Specialty Chemicals Acquires JEEN

H.I.G. Capital ("H.I.G."), a leading global alternative investment firm with over $47 billion of equity capital under management, is pleased to announce that its portfolio company, Vantage Specialty Chemicals Holdings, Inc. (“Vantage” or the “Company”), a leading, vertically-integrated provider of naturally derived ingredients, has acquired JEEN International Corporation and Botanicals Plus, Inc. (collectively, “JEEN”).

The combination marks an exciting new chapter in Vantage’s evolution to a solutions-oriented leader in the personal care ingredients space. JEEN is highly complementary to Vantage Personal Care’s existing comprehensive portfolio of naturally derived ingredients, including active ingredients, natural oils, and bio-based chassis ingredients.

JEEN is a leading global provider of naturally derived specialty ingredients and blends for the personal care and cosmetics markets. JEEN’s portfolio includes a diverse range of specialized active ingredients, botanical extracts, and complexes serving functional applications for skin and hair care. JEEN is an innovative leader in rapid product development and customization to support its global customer base of leading multinationals and emerging indie brands. JEEN’s owners, Adam Perle and Jeanne Perle, will join the Vantage team and remain invested in the business going forward.

“We are highly impressed with JEEN’s close customer relationships reinforced by its innovation, creativity and responsiveness,” commented Steve Doktycz, Chief Executive Officer of Vantage. “Our team has long admired JEEN’s solutions-based approach to rapidly develop tailor-made blends meeting its customers’ requirements. In addition, the acquisition of JEEN fits squarely within our strategy to expand Vantage’s capabilities in personal care and food ingredients, which now represent over two-thirds of Vantage’s business.”

Adam Perle and Jeanne Perle added: “Together, Vantage and JEEN can leverage its combined portfolio of natural specialty ingredients to bring additional solutions, speed and service to all customers. Our customers will benefit by having ready access to Vantage’s portfolio of active skin care ingredients, natural oils, and jojoba derivatives, and we look forward to augmenting Vantage’s formulation services with our rapid development capabilities.”

“JEEN is a highly complementary addition to Vantage that brings fast formulation capabilities and deep expertise in botanical extracts to Vantage’s Personal Care business,” commented Keval Patel, Managing Director at H.I.G. “We will continue to support management and the Company in investing in high-value, specialty ingredients, particularly in the personal care and food ingredient space.”

JEEN is the fifth add-on acquisition that Vantage has completed since H.I.G. acquired the Company in October 2017.

About Vantage
Vantage is a leading specialty ingredients company providing tailored solutions through its naturally derived ingredients and formulations for the personal care, food, consumer and industrial end markets. The Company is vertically integrated from Farm-to-Formulation™, possessing world-class farming, manufacturing, and formulation facilities across three continents. Vantage supplies over 2,500 products to a diverse and growing customer base in more than 60 countries. For more information, visit www.vantagegrp.com.

About JEEN
JEEN is a supplier for the personal care, cosmetics, flavor & fragrance and pharmaceutical markets, serving more than 3,000 customers and 20 distributors globally. Its core competence is in the development and production of universally approved active and functional ingredients, including botanical extracts, preservatives, sensory modifiers, texturing agents, and other sustainable solutions. For more information, visit www.jeen.com and www.botanicalsplus.com.

About H.I.G. Capital
H.I.G. is a leading global alternative assets investment firm with over $47 billion of equity capital under management.* Based in Miami, and with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, H.I.G. specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/value-added approach. Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 300 companies worldwide. The firm’s current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $30 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at www.higcapital.com.


* Based on total capital commitments managed by H.I.G. Capital and affiliates.