Kickstart: Snapware containers caught in an Instant Pot fiscal shortfall

Instant Brands Inc., the corporate owner of a range of consumer kitchen brands including Instant Pot pressure cookers, Corelle dishes and Snapware plastic storage containers, has entered Chapter 11.

"Over the last several years, we have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic and the global supply chain crisis, all while delivering profitable results," the Downers Grove, Ill.-based company said in a statement to its suppliers on its website. "Today, we are managing additional macro-challenges beyond our control that have impacted our business and affected our liquidity levels.

"As a result, our capital structure — including our debt levels — is now unsustainable," it added.

First launched in 2009, the Instant Pot, with its 21st century take on a reliable pressure cooker, has been a big hit with consumers almost since it first hit store shelves. In 2019, a private equity firm, Cornell Capital, purchased it and merged it with Corelle Brands, which also owned the Pyrex, CorningWare, Chicago Cutlery and Snapware brands.

Snapware, with manufacturing in Mira Loma, Calif., had been acquired by Corelle in 2010.

Instant Brands told suppliers it has funding in place to continue operations while it restructures.

"We expect to continue working with our vendors and suppliers as we always have," the company said. "We are continuing to provide consumers our iconic brands and innovative housewares and appliance products. You play a key role in helping us provide for our customers, and your continued cooperation will promote our mutual success."

Plastic pipe can be about more than providing a conduit to move water or natural gas or electric power. For an indigenous community in Oklahoma, pipe is part of a plan to bring tribal members home.

PN's Catherine Kavanaugh visited the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Shawnee, Okla., as it prepared to open Sovereign Pipe Technologies Inc., a 45,000-square-foot, $25 million investment that will make it the first U.S. tribe to extrude pipe domestically. It is also part of a multipronged approach for housing, better infrastructure and jobs.

Only about 12,000 of the 39,000 tribe members live near Shawnee. By investing in streetlights, water systems and housing — in addition to jobs — leaders say residents will return.

"My generation has to build community, and then the next generation will have something to grow on," tribal Chairman John "Rocky" Barrett, whose Potawatomi name, Kiweoge, means "He Leads Them Home," told Catherine.

A quick update to something from last week when I mentioned that Delta Air Lines was running a pilot program with reusable polypropylene cups from Turn Systems Co.

Now Live Nation, the big company behind ticketing and logistics for concert venues, announced it would use the reusable cup system from Turn for all of its operations in Atlanta.

"A single reusable Turn cup has the potential to displace up to 100 single-use cups and can break even on its environmental impact in as few as three uses," Live Nation said in a news release.