Catering Scotland

Kimberly-Clark Professional, the parent company of household brands including Andrex®, Kleenex®, Huggies®, WypAll® and Scott®, is celebrating the official opening of a new onshore wind farm that will supply around 80% of its UK electrical power needs.

The £75m development in South Lanarkshire is the largest wind asset owned by Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust (ORIT), a company managed by Octopus Energy Generation.

With a Power Purchase Agreement for the energy generated, this is Kimberly-Clark’s first wind farm project outside North America. The 50MW 12-turbine Cumberhead facility will supply the company with approximately 160,000 megawatt hours of renewable energy every year, resulting in a total reduction of over 55 MTCO2e per year – the equivalent of taking 38,628 passenger vehicles off the road.

Craig Bowman, General Manager, Kimberly-Clark Professional UK & Ireland, said: ‘It is through responsible and innovative business partnerships and investments in new technology like this agreement with ORIT that enables us to make significant changes to help us reach our decarbonisation goals.’

‘We adopt a life cycle approach to sustainability, starting by designing products to reduce consumption, use of natural resources and diverting our manufacturing waste away from landfill.’

David Bird, Investment Director for Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust (ORIT), added: ‘Onshore wind farms like these are generating much-needed clean power for the UK and it’s brilliant to be supplying this renewable power from this wind farm to Kimberly-Clark to help decarbonise their business. The more businesses that follow their lead, the quicker we can accelerate the push to net zero.’

The green power will be used by Kimberly-Clark’s manufacturing facilities across the UK, comprising around 80% of the electricity needs for its Barrow, Flint and Northfleet manufacturing facilities. Over 185 million toilet rolls and around 30 million rolls of WypAll wipers are manufactured annually for the B2B market in UK and Europe, alongside nearly 1bn Andrex toilet rolls and over 150m boxes of Kleenex tissues.

Oriol Margo, Sustainability Leader at Kimberly-Clark EMEA, said: ‘As we move towards solely renewable energy we continue to invest in the future of the planet, our business and the FMCG industry as a whole, and we hope to encourage other organisations to do the same along the way.’

Part of Kimberly-Clark UK & Ireland’s wider sustainability strategy and its ambition to move to 100% renewable energy by 2030, the company is also working with Octopus on developing on-site solar power alongside green hydrogen projects.

For more information on how Kimberly-Clark Professional can help your business to thrive, visit www.kcprofessional.com/en-gb.