Kickstart: Sweetgreen, salads and SPACs

Here's what I know about the chain restaurant Sweetgreen: It's a very trendy place known for its salad and grain bowls and is also quite expensive for salad.

Now I know something else: It is temporarily using plastic containers — rather than fiber-based compostable bowls — for its takeout, and customers aren't happy.

"The temporary Sweetgreen bowls are an absolute joke," one Twitter user wrote.

The problem, writes Cara Eisenpress at our sister paper Crain's New York Business, is that Footprint, the Arizona-based maker of the compostable container supplied to Sweetgreen, was caught up in a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that founded itself underfunded as demand took off.

Footprint announced Jan. 26 that it would close a manufacturing plant in South Carolina, and Eisenpress notes that it's not clear when regular supplies of the containers would resume to Sweetgreen or how widespread the shortage is. The chain has said it will resume using the bowls as they become available.

It also says the replacement containers contain the same amount of food, but customers on social media dispute that. (In fact, complaints about size seem to be predominant, rather than the material used in the package.)

"Now I have to find another salad to eat because I'm still hungry!" a social media user complained.

Auto supplier Kautex Textron GmbH & Co. KG is continuing its push to expand beyond blow molded fuel tanks with the first commercial sale for an auto part focused on electric vehicle batteries.

An unspecified automaker will use the thermoplastic composite underbody battery protection skid plate developed by Kautex Textron as part of its Pentatonic battery system.

Kautex Textron is a global supplier of multilayer blow molded tanks, which puts it at risk in an industry investing more in EVs and fuel cells. So developing product lines geared at EVs will be key.

The skid plate is designed to meet impact requirements and offers a 50 percent weight reduction vs. steel, the company said in a Feb. 6 news release.

David Vink, a Plastics News correspondent, wrote in October about the Pentatonic program if you want more details.

You may have heard a thing or two in the past few days about high-altitude balloons.

While the underlying story behind an errant Chinese balloon downed just off the U.S. coast will likely be under investigation — and debated — for some time, an executive for a U.S. maker of high-altitude balloons says that having them wander off from their projected flight plans isn't that strange.

"Balloons are surprisingly difficult to get to come down," Jared Leidich, co-founder and chief technical officer for Denver-based Urban Sky, told Design News. "Throughout our careers, we've seen multiple times what it looks like when a balloon termination system fails. We work really hard to not have that happen but it is one of the realities of high-altitude ballooning."

Urban Sky makes thin reinforced-film balloons using a proprietary material that monitor remote areas, check out damage in disaster areas, monitor farmland and other uses. Leidich said the company also consulted with federal officials to monitor the Chinese balloon's flight.