Kimberly-Clark rep: Warren to house its 2nd largest manufacturer, will bring labor & admin jobs

Kimberly-Clark, the global company behind Huggies, Kleenex and Kotex, is expanding into the Mahoning Valley, bringing its second-largest facility to Warren with plans to create 500 new jobs.

"I would say specifically Ohio, It really is a strong manufacturing workforce. It’s ease of distribution," Tamera Fenske, Chief Supply Chain Officer for Kimberly-Clark, said.

Founded in 1872 by four men in Neenah, Wisconsin, Kimberly-Clark began as a paper mill, selling newsprint to customers including the Chicago Tribune, but wartime innovation changed its trajectory.

During World War I, the company developed a material for medical bandages.

That material later inspired the creation of Kotex, the world’s first disposable feminine pad and Kimberly-Clark’s first consumer product.

At the time, many retailers refused to sell it due to social taboos around menstruation but KC said it continued to market the product that is still sold today. 

Just four years later, Kimberly-Clark introduced Kleenex, which became a household name and expanded the company’s role in the personal care market.

The Warren facility will focus on diversified manufacturing in Warren, a strategy that includes producing a variety of products and processes in one place, giving the company more flexibility in how and what it makes.

"We want to have a mega site. We want to have a site capable of creating and producing all of our key products," Fenske said, "We will have folks operating and making the products every day. We'll have engineers, we'll have managers, we'll have administrative and so it's really it takes a tremendous amount of capability and functionality to run a supply chain and run a plant of this size. And so we're excited to be able to offer a wide range of jobs to the area."

Kimberly-Clark employs more than 40,000 people around the world and has 18 manufacturing facilities across North America and 71 facilities globally.

The site is set to open in the next two or three years.