Kimberly-Clark Corporation is an American personal care corporation that produces mostly
paper-based consumer products.
Kimberly-Clark brand name products include Kleenex facial tissue, Kotex feminine hygiene
products, Cottonelle, Scott and Andrex toilet paper, Wypall utility wipes, KimWipes scientific
cleaning wipes, and Huggies disposable diapers.
Based in Irving, Texas, it has approximately 56,000 employees.
Kimberly-Clark UK holds a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II and the Prince of Wales
in the United Kingdom.
Kimberly Clark is also listed among the Fortune 500.
Subsidiaries under Kimberly-Clark include Kimberly-Clark Health Care and Kimberly-Clark
Professional.
History Kimberly, Clark and Co. was founded in 1872
by John A. Kimberly, Havilah Babcock, Charles B. Clark, and Franklyn C. Shattuck in Neenah,
Wisconsin with US42,000 capitalization.
The group's first business was operating paper mills, which the collective expanded throughout
the following decades.
In 1914 the company developed cellu-cotton, a cotton substitute used by the United States
Army as surgical cotton during World War I. Army nurses used cellu-cotton pads as disposable
sanitary napkins, and six years later the company introduced Kotex, the first disposable
feminine hygiene product.
Kleenex, a disposable handkerchief, followed in 1924.
Kimberly & Clark joined with The New York Times Company in 1926 to build a newsprint
mill in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada.
Two years later, the company went public as Kimberly-Clark.
The firm expanded internationally during the 1950s, opening plants in Mexico, Germany and
the United Kingdom.
It began operations in 17 more foreign locations in the 1960s.
The company formed Midwest Express Airlines from its corporate flight department in 1984.
Kimberly-Clark's headquarters moved from Neenah, Wisconsin to Irving, Texas the following year..
Under the leadership of Darwin Smith as CEO from 1971 to 1991, company went from being
a business paper company to a consumer paper products company.
In 1991, Kimberly-Clark and The New York Times Company sold their jointly owned paper mill
in Kapuskasing, Ontario.
Kimberly-Clark entered a joint venture to produce personal care products in Argentina
in 1994 and also bought the feminine hygiene units of VP-Schickedanz and Handan Comfort
and Beauty Group.
Kimberly-Clark bought Scott Paper in 1995 for $9.4 billion.
In 1997, Kimberly-Clark sold its 50% stake in Canada's Scott Paper to forest products
company Kruger Inc. and bought diaper operations in Spain and Portugal and disposable surgical
face masks maker Tecnol Medical Products.
Augmenting its presence in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, in 1999 the company paid $365
million for the tissue business of Swiss-based Attisholz Holding.
Adding to its offerings of medical products, the company bought Ballard Medical Products
in 1999 for $744 million and examination glove maker Safeskin in 2000 for about $800 million.
Also in 2000, the company bought virtually all of Taiwan's S-K Corporation; the move
made Kimberly-Clark one of the largest manufacturers of consumer packaged goods in Taiwan.
The company later purchased Taiwan Scott Paper Corporation for about $40 million and merged
the two companies, forming Kimberly-Clark Taiwan.
In 2001, Kimberly-Clark bought Italian diaper maker, Linostar, and announced it was closing
four Latin American manufacturing plants.
Kimberly-Clark Sub-Saharan Africa's vision is ambitious – nothing less than turning
the $250 million business into a $1 billion business by 2015.
In 2002, Kimberly-Clark purchased paper-packaging rival Amcor's stake in an Australian joint
venture.
Adding to its global consumer tissue business, in 2003 Kimberly-Clark acquired the Polish
tissue-maker Klucze.
In early 2004, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Falk began implementation of
the global business plan the company detailed in July 2003.
The firm combined its North American and European groups for personal care and consumer tissue
under North Atlantic groups and was working to ensure that Asian, Latin American, and
Eastern European markets were supplied, specifically in the areas of value-tiered diapers, light-end
incontinence, and health care products.
Governance Current members of the board of directors
of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation are: John Alm
Dennis Beresford John Bergstrom Chairman of the largest auto
dealer group in Wisconsin.
From Neenah Wisconsin.
Abelanrdo Bru Pastora Caffeutrty
Robert Decherd Thomas J. Falk
Claudio X.
Gonzalez Mae Jemison
Linda Rice Marc Shapiro
Craig Sullivan.
Relationship with Midwest Airlines The origin of Midwest Airlines can be traced
back to 1948, when the Kimberly-Clark Corporation opened its corporate flight department and
began providing air transportation for company executives and engineers between the company's
Neenah, Wisconsin headquarters, and company owned paper mills.
In 1969, K-C Aviation was born from the company's air operations, and was dedicated to the maintenance
of corporate aircraft.
In 1982, K-C Aviation initiated shuttle flights for Kimberly-Clark employees between Appleton,
Memphis, and Atlanta.
From these experiences and considering the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, Kimberly-Clark
and K-C Aviation decided to form a regularly scheduled passenger airline, and out of the
initiative, Midwest Express Airlines was started on June 11, 1984.
The name of the airline was shortened to Midwest Airlines in 2003.
Environmental record
In 2005, Greenpeace launched the Kleercut campaign against Kimberly-Clark because the
company had been linked to the logging of ancient Boreal forests.
The environmental organization charged that Kimberly-Clark was using more than 3 million
tonnes of pulp a year from forests to produce tissue products, such as the Kleenex brand.
Greenpeace led a large grassroots student activist campaign targeting Kimberly-Clark
for sourcing 22% of its paper pulp from Canadian boreal forests containing 200-year-old trees.
Greenpeace ended its campaign in August 2009, following the release of a new environmental
policy by Kimberly-Clark.
The two organizations announced that they were moving "away from conflict to a new collaborative
relationship to further promote forest conservation, responsible forest management, and the use
of recycled fiber for the manufacture of tissue products."
Kimberly-Clark has a target to purchase 100% of wood fiber from suppliers that gain independent
sustainability certification, with a preference for Forest Stewardship Council-certified fiber.
Kimberly-Clark stated that by the end of 2010, it had achieved 98% of this target.
Major U.S. consumer product lines Cottonelle
Cottonelle is a brand name for bath products.
Product forms include premium bath tissue and flushable moist wipe products.
Depend Depend is a brand name for incontinence products
worn by adults.
GoodNites GoodNites are absorbent disposable underwear
manufactured by Kimberly Clark made primarily for children and teens who still wet the bed
at night.
They can also be used for daytime protection.
Huggies Huggies are disposable diapers for infants
and toddlers.
Additional Huggies brand products include "Huggies Clean Team" products for toddlers
such as shampoo, hand soap, wash mitten, etc.
Little Swimmers Little Swimmers is a brand of disposable swim
diaper.
Kleenex Kleenex is the brand name of facial tissue
paper.
Many versions have been made, including with lotion, our softest ever!, and regular.
In the '70s, Dr. Cody Sweet was hired through Dan Edelman Public Relations to represent
the newly styled and colored quadrant designed boxes of the product as national media spokesperson.
Kotex Kotex is a feminine hygiene product line,
which includes panty liners, sanitary napkins, and tampons.
Pull-Ups Pull-Ups is a brand name of training pants
for toddlers, marketed together with the Huggies brand of baby products.
Scott
Scott is a brand name of paper napkins, paper towels, and bath tissue/wipes.
VIVA VIVA is a brand name of heavy-duty paper towels.
Mexican consumer product lines Includes most of the American products and
these products: Napkin Brands
Kimberly-Clark distributes a variety of napkin brands.
Toilet paper brands
Kimberly-Clark distributes a variety of toilet paper brands.
KleenBebe A baby diaperbrand name similar to Huggies.
The brand is a combination of "kleen" and "bebe".
Kimberly-Clark also has a variety of brands designed for professional markets and medical
markets.
Major professional and global products KimWipes
KimWipes are a type of cleaning tissue commonly used in laboratories.
They are intended for applications where leaving lint or fibres on a surface would be undesirable,
such as slides and pipettes.
They are sometimes used to clean lenses as well, but use on optical lenses with special
water and solvent based coatings may cause light blemishes, and the manufacturer recommends
using a wipe specifically designed for use with coated lenses.
KimWipes are composed of virgin wood pulp from certified forests, with little chemical
additives.
DryNites DryNites are a plainer, unisex version of
GoodNites sold in Europe and Australasia.
The sizing also differs from that of Goodnites.
DryNites come in three sizes: Medium, Large and Extra Large.
Changes to the product were made in 2006 to mirror the American version more closely.
See also
Kimberly Crest Toilet paper in the United States
References
External links Official website