Tupperware is going through a bad patch and bankruptcy is not far away

Falling sales, financial difficulties… the Tupperware share plunged 50% on Monday April 10 on the New York Stock Exchange. The title is worth only one dollar against 40 three years ago. Another announcement says a lot about the economic situation of the group: the management indicates that it has mandated financial advice for “resolve doubts about its ability to continue its activity“… A way to ward off the fate of a company that feels the end is approaching.

>> Tupperware, the little emancipated box

Business continues to decline. In 2022, the company achieved a turnover of 1.1 billion euros, down 20% over one year. The Covid-19 and the confinements had revived sales via the Internet, but the upturn was short-lived. Tupperware, which stopped producing in France at its Joué-les-Tours factory in Indre-et-Loire in 2018, must now bear a debt of 640 million euros. The group reimburses it with emergency financing, but at prohibitive interest rates between 9 and 10%. No one believes it anymore.

Fierce competition

Long before soaring raw material prices that raised manufacturing costs and inflation that drove up item prices and hampered sales, Tupperware suffered from an image deficit that remained on the meetings of yesteryear. , between housewives, at home. Faced with this, the competition has increased (Curver, Rubbermaid, Pamperedchef.com in particular).

This is without taking into account the lack of image of plastic, undermined by current ecological concerns. Tupperware has however evolved on the raw material: the boxes and bowls are still airtight, but the use of polyethylene has ended.

Polycarbonate is replaced by thermoplastic polyester which has similar properties, but without traces of bisphenol A. Costly efforts which have had difficulty in making the brand survive. The lid is well and truly closing on a great 77-year-old adventure.