A Mexican affiliate of Kimberly-Clark Corp. that sold hand sanitizer made with a toxic, industrial form of alcohol filed for bankruptcy, blaming the mistake on a scramble to find ingredients early in the pandemic’s supply-chain meltdown, Bloomberg News reported. 4E Brands Northamerica, a subsidiary of Kimberly-Clark de Mexico SAB de C.V., blamed its chapter 11 case on a bad batch it made from methanol alcohol near the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. Amid a shortage of hand sanitizers, 4E Brands sought new suppliers of ethyl alcohol, a federally approved ingredient, according to court papers filed Tuesday in federal court in Laredo, Texas. The company “sourced some of its raw ingredients from opportunistic suppliers who, whether intentionally or mistakenly, provided methanol instead of ethyl alcohol,” David M. Dunn, the chief restructuring officer, said in court papers. The company now faces multiple personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits, he said. n 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reacted to a shortage of hand sanitizers by temporarily loosening restrictions on manufacturers, according to Dunn. 4E Brands ramped up production using new suppliers who sold the company the wrong type of alcohol, Dunn said in his filing. 4E Brands “did not know of the substitution. It believed ethanol was used to manufacture the hand sanitizer it distributed,” Dunn said, referring to the safer type of alcohol. “In fact, it contained methanol.”
