Knowlton Development Corporation (KDC) President and CEO Nicholas Whitley

Knowlton Development Corporation (KDC), a leading contract manufacturer of health and beauty-care products, headquartered in Longueuil, Quebec, has acquired Thibiant International, a California based formulator and manufacturer of personal and skin care products.

This transaction comes in the wake of a series of acquisitions carried out in 2014 and 2015, in particular of Cosmetic Technologies, last year, which allowed KDC to establish a first branch on the West Coast of the U.S.

"We are very confident that this acquisition will add considerable growth potential and enable us to establish a strong presence on the West Coast of the U.S.," states KDC President and CEO Nicholas Whitley. "We found particularly attractive Thibiant’s innovation-driven business model, its high-tech facilities and equipment, its exceptional client base and, most of all, its team of talented and highly qualified professionals. KDC and Thibiant also share very similar corporate cultures and operating principles, which establishes a solid base for cooperation. We are going to phase some of Thibiant’s best practices into our operation and export some of ours, which will make for excellent synergies benefiting everyone."

The acquisition of Thibiant, which has 285 full-time employees in facilities extending over 330,000 square feet (30,600 m2), is also in line the KDC strategic goal of doubling the size of the company and hitting the billion-dollar mark in annual sales over the next three to five years.