World Kitchen Inc., which makes tableware and kitchenware under brands such as Corelle, Pyrex and CorningWare, is looking for a new owner.
The privately held company, which is based in Reston, Virgin…
World Kitchen Inc., which makes tableware and kitchenware under brands such as Corelle, Pyrex and CorningWare, is looking for a new owner. The privately held company, which is based in Reston, Virginia, wishes to remain intact when it changes owners rather than being broken up. “There“s great synergy among these brands, and they“re all household names,” spokesman Doug Arnold said 3 March 2005. While glass and fiber-optics maker Corning Inc. still licenses the Pyrex and CorningWare trademarks, it is not expected to be an obstacle to any sales, he said. World Kitchen was created in 1998 from the sale of Corning“s consumer housewares business: Pyrex and Corelle glass, CorningWare glass ceramic and Revere metal cookware. In 1999, it acquired Ekco Group and General Housewares. Parent company WKI Holding Co. agreed to a voluntary Chapter 11 filing in May 2002 in a restructuring deal with major stakeholders aimed at cutting debt, and World Kitchen emerged from bankruptcy protection eight months later. The firm employs 2,800 people, mostly in the United States, and makes Corelle products at a factory in Elmira, New York, and Pyrex in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. “We“re owned by financial institutions, and it never was our expectation that that would be the long-term ownership structure,” Arnold said. “We feel like we“ve positioned the company very well that we can find buyers out there who will appreciate our strengths and build upon them. Plus the whole M&A (mergers and acquisitions) market is strong now, so we think the time is right.” World Kitchen“s sales have declined from more than USD 900 million to approximately USD 600 million, largely because of market-share losses in its Revere cookware, CorningWare and Ekco bakeware and kitchen equipment units, said Bill McLoughlin, executive director of Home World Business, a Long Island-based magazine that covers the housewares industry. “World Kitchen is a company that“s cursed with an abundance of riches — they have more brands than they“re able to fully support,” McLoughlin said. “To the best of my knowledge, they are not profitable and have not been for a number of years.” World Kitchen declined to discuss its finances. Global Home Products, composed of cookware, glassware and picture-frame divisions divested by Newell Rubbermaid Inc. could be a buyer, according to McLoughlin. “That is a company in many of the same segments and has customers of the same scale,” he said. More obviously, he said, “there is and continues to be a lot of interest in the housewares industry from investment companies who think they can come in and run these businesses, make a profit and then move on.”