Kickstart: Hiring help for Tupperware

The financially struggling Tupperware Brands Corp. has brought in help to find ways to survive.

The Orlando, Fla.-based housewares icon said in April that it was at risk of entering bankruptcy protection. On May 4, it filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating it has hired investment bank Moelis & Co. LLC to "run a process to explore strategic alternatives, and advise on potential means to improve [its] liquidity and capital structure and other strategic transactions."

It also brought on Brian J. Fox, managing director of Alvarez & Marsal North America LLC, as its new chief restructuring officer. Fox leads A&M's North American commercial restructuring practice in New York and has 30 years of experience in restructuring and "other special situations."

Tupperware has been struggling for years trying to retain its status as a leading kitchen product and storage container company in the face of less expensive options that flooded the marketplace. As PN's Jim Johnson wrote last month, analysts said the company's "long-term trend is decline."

Stock value for Tupperware that traded for about $20 per share a year ago and $4 at the start of 2023 is now selling at less than $1.

Child labor is coming under increased scrutiny in the U.S., with news coverage of underage hiring at auto supply plants in Alabama named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Reuters has extensively covered lax hiring practices at suppliers to Hyundai that saw children as young as 12 working on assembly lines.

One of those companies in Reuters' coverage, lighting supplier SL Alabama, has been fined $47,000 from the U.S. Department of Labor for hiring a 13-year-old and two 15-year-olds to work at a plant in Alexander City, Ala. Federal law prohibits hiring anyone younger than 16 in a manufacturing facility.

The three Reuters reporters who spent a year documenting underage labor — Joshua Schneyer, Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Cooke — were named finalists for National Reporting by Pulitzer judges.

Ocean-bound plastic recovered from riverbanks and in rivers is now being used to package seafood harvested from the oceans.

Karen Laird from our sister paper Sustainable Plastics writes about the Sabic polypropylene made using about 60 percent ocean-bound plastic in flexible packaging for Coldwater Prawns of Norway. The project — also involving Estiko Packaging Solutions of Estonia — is featured at the big international packaging trade show Interpack in Düsseldorf, Germany, this week.

The PP is part of Sabic's Trucircle portfolio that uses advanced recycling to return plastics recovered within 50 kilometers of the ocean to the material stream, Karen writes. It is mass balance certified under the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification Plus chain of custody.

The prawn packaging is only part of the sustainable items featured at Interpack that Karen writes about in SP.