Our suppliers are the 30,000-plus companies worldwide that provide the goods and services we need to run our facilities and make our products. These include around 150 contract manufacturers that produce finished products to our specifications. In 2008, 96 percent of Kimberly-Clark’s cost of sales in North America and Europe related to our own production and contract manufacturers accounted for the remaining four percent. We expect suppliers to comply with applicable laws, standards and codes and to work to enhance the sustainability of their operations.

We keep our suppliers informed of our sustainability objectives and activities through our Sustainability at K-C: Guide for Suppliers, launched in 2007. During 2008, we initiated sustainability discussions with a number of our key suppliers. These discussions were designed to identify areas where collaboration could help achieve key K-C sustainability objectives.

We are working with several major suppliers to develop shared sustainability objectives for 2009 and beyond. Some larger suppliers already have sustainability strategies and goals in place, primarily for packaging and material use. Our 2009 goals are to put in place sustainability objectives with:

• Approximately 25 tier-one suppliers (tiers are defined by a combination of spend and strategic importance).
• Approximately 25 tier-two suppliers.

The 50 suppliers targeted above represent just over half of our total spend.

See the performance page for information on monitoring supplier performance.

Supplier diversity

We aim to source from a range of suppliers that reflect the diversity of our customers and consumers. This is in keeping with our founding value of fair dealing, and increases the skills and expertise available to us. In the U.S., supply chain diversity is a condition of dealing with government and many of our corporate customers.See the performance page for more detail.

Print this page