In the latest in a series of Face to Face interviews, Neil Nixon speaks with Craig Bowman, Commercial Director, KCP, UK and Ireland, Kimberly-Clark.
What are the most important/critical business goals for KC UK in 2025?
For us at KC this year we will continue to build on the great momentum from 2024. We are expanding our team by more than 30% to ensure we can support more customers achieve their cost, waste, efficiency and sustainability targets. Partnering with our customers to jointly tackle these targets is where we have the greatest success, so we are going to be ensuring that we can care for more customers, more often by broadening our reach. Our brands remain key to that, too, and we will be investing more into those, looking for potential synergies across the KC enterprise to bring the best brands that people recognise for their quality, reliability and experience.
You mention your brands - what brands does KC own?
I really think it starts with who we are and why we exist. Kimberly-Clark is 153 years old this year, after beginning life as a paper-reel manufacturer in 1872. It has built its foundations on providing the best products, best customer service, and care for its people. These principles led to the creation of renowned brands like Kleenex, Scott, Huggies, Andrex, and Kotex. These brands embody the same foundations set 153 years ago, offering products that improve customers’ lives. For instance, the Scott brand invented the toilet roll in the early 20th century. Such innovations over the years form the bedrock of KC’s purpose for being, which is to Provide Better Care for a Better World.
And how are these brands helping customers today?
Let’s perhaps start with our KC-Professional business, which itself acts as a brand, partnering with customers with a consultative approach to find tailored solutions. Different customers have different needs and challenges and therefore require different products; for example, airport washrooms need different solutions than hotels or high-end offices. Our team ensures customers understand the right range for their needs. Additionally, we’ve evolved our brands to include services like RightCycle, which helps remove towel and dispenser waste from sites. This supports customers in providing hygienic hand drying solutions while meeting sustainability goals.
You refer to waste recovery. Do you see that as key change within the market dynamic over recent years?
Certainly, and rightly so. People are becoming more aware of waste, driven by better education, more awareness and legislation. Those elements are clearly now changing the way we all buy products at home, and that is driving a different set of decision making in the B2B purchasing space. Waste is a combination of both ensuring you are using the right products that reduce the amount of product that is thrown away in the first place, and then the focus turns to what you do with the waste itself. I’m proud that KC focus on both elements. Our products are designed to reduce waste, deliver cost and efficiency savings because of their design, and then we have our RightCycle Towel recovery service to support customers in ensuring that the minimal waste that is created, is recovered and channelled back into waste streams to make new products.
Expanding the recycling and waste management theme, can you explain KC’s broader sustainability and ESG/social impact objectives?
Sustainability is an area where we know our customers are demanding more, and we are making huge strides in this space. Our UK business has set a goal to 100% renewable energy by 2030, and currently 80% of the electricity required to power our UK based mills, is coming from wind, which is fantastic. Broader than sustainability alone, we do a lot of work to ensure we improve the communities that we serve, from our Toilets Change Lives programme, that is helping to build hygienic washrooms in areas that do not have access to clean sanitation, to our work with Bowel Cancer UK, to date ensuring that over 100 million packs of Andrex carry warning messages related to the symptoms of bowel cancer.
Your career to date has been varied, working in a number of regions for KC. How do you stay motivated – what future KC plans give you energy for 2025 and beyond?
I’ve now been with KC since 2008, so it will be 17 years this year, and I remain really proud to work for a company that continues to retain these core foundations of care throughout its culture. I’ve been blessed to have the chance to experience how that care translates in different markets, tailored to those varied market needs. What remains consistent though, is the passion that our people have to bring the best products, best service and best ultimate care to our customers, our people and our environment and communities. Working with people that show that level of care, everyday, is what continues to give me energy, 17 years on.
How does KC help the people of this industry outside its business?
The cleaning industry is really key for KC, and as a leader in washroom and wiping supplies into the sector, we remain committed to the industry and all those within it. One of the ways we have continually supported is via our bi-annual Golden Service Awards, which have now been in place for over 30 years. These awards recognise those within the cleaning industry that at times, may not get the direct recognition for the amazing, and critical work that they undertake every day. From cleaning operatives in healthcare environments, or schools, to the team leaders who empower, engage and guide these teams to perform at the highest levels daily, the GSA is there to reward the very best of the best, every two years, and say thank you for keeping us all safe and healthy when we leave our homes each day.
As a recent exhibitor at the Cleaning Show, can you outline why this event is important to Kimberly-Clark Professional?
The Cleaning Show is one of the major events in the diary for any company in the cleaning industry, and this year is no different for us at KC. It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to connect with current and prospective new customers, and to share the latest updates and innovations with them. The show is a great chance to share with everyone what we are dojng. This year we shared a few insights into how the new KC will be backing our ‘Powerhouse’ brands, and how those brands can support our customers with their daily challenges.
Staying with the Cleaning Show, how have you seen the event evolve over the years and what would you like to see going forward?
Coming back to one of the questions earlier about the rising importance of waste and the increasing regulations in the sustainability space, this is the biggest area of change in the last few years at the Cleaning Show. Clearly more focus on ensuring the event itself is delivered as sustainably as possible, but also using the time and the speaking slots to support with further education for the industry.
To summarize, you mention the plans for 2025 and the future - what are the one or two things that really excite you as you look forward?
2025 is a really exciting year for us at KC. The new organisational structure, alongside the ability to expand the commercial team, gives us a platform to support our customers even better, alongside trying some new things. Bringing in talented people, and giving them an opportunity to grow within a great company is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a leader, so this gives me great energy. All of this will help us continue to deliver the best products, with the best service with the best care. That is what gives me huge amounts of energy.
https://www.kcprofessional.com/en-gb
