Kimberly Clark

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 $42,000 of capital. The group's first business was operating paper mills, which the collective expanded throughout the following decades. The company developed cellu-cotton in 1914, a cotton substitute used by the U.S. 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, West 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, although its products are still produced in Neenah. Under the leadership of Darwin Smith as CEO from 1971 to 1991, the 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 with Buenos Aires-based Descartables Argentinos S.A. to produce personal care products in Argentina in 1994 and also bought the feminine hygiene unit of VP-Schickedanz (Germany) for $123 million and a 90% stake in Handan Comfort and Beauty Group (China).

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 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 $774 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:

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 headquarters in Neenah, Wisconsin, and its 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.

K-C Aviation divested itself from the airline in 1996. Two years later, Gulfstream Aerospace purchased K-C Aviation from Kimberly-Clark for $250 million, which included its operations at airports in Dallas, Appleton, and Westfield, Massachusetts.

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 tons of pulp a year from forests to produce tissue paper 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 is a brand name for bath products. Product forms include premium bath tissue and flushable moist wipe products.

Depend is a brand name for incontinence products worn by adults.

GoodNites are absorbent disposable underwear manufactured by Kimberly Clark (makers of Huggies Diapers and Depend Briefs) made primarily for children and teens who still wet the bed at night. They can also be used for daytime protection.

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 is a brand of disposable swim diaper.

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 (color psychologist) 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 is a feminine hygiene product line, which includes panty liners, sanitary napkins, and tampons.

Pull-Ups is a brand name of training pants for toddlers, marketed together with the Huggies brand of baby products.

Scott is a brand name of paper napkins, paper towels, and bath tissue/wipes.

VIVA is a brand name of heavy-duty paper towels.

Mexican consumer product lines

Includes most of the American products and these products:

Kimberly-Clark distributes a variety of napkin brands (Kleenex, Petalo, Suavel, Delsey, Lys).

Kimberly-Clark distributes a variety of toilet paper brands (Kleenex, Petalo, Suavel, Delsey, Vogue, Lys).

A baby diaperbrand name similar to Huggies. The brand is a combination of "kleen" (Kleenex) and "bebe" (Spanish for "baby").

Kimberly-Clark also has a variety of brands designed for professional markets and medical markets.

KimWipes

KimWipes are a type of cleaning tissue commonly used in laboratories. They are intended for applications where leaving lint or fibers 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.