Kimberly-Clark raises its commitment to personal care and to do so, announces investments of 80 million dollars in more technology, innovation and product development.

These will be concentrated in its Latin American plants, part of which are located in Colombia, according to what Gonzalo Uribe, president of the company for the region, said in an interview with EL TIEMPO.

How are you seeing this 2023?

This is a year of great challenges. The global situation has repercussions in Colombia, but we also have a tax reform, which generates some uncertainty. However, with the planes we are prepared to face the year in the best way, such as very aggressive innovation, renewal in all product categories, investing more in the consumer and extracting the greatest possible efficiencies from the production processes and the operational line.

It means that, despite the situation, they will continue to invest…

Kimberly-Clark plans an investment of 80 million dollars in Latin America in the next 10 years to strengthen its innovation center. However, in the last three years we have invested more than 80 million dollars in technology in the country, we have updated all our lines of diapers to state-of-the-art technology and our lines of feminine products. We also renewed other production lines and this year and we are completing this year an additional 20 million in the Puerto Tejada plant in Cauca, improving our productive capacity in wet towels. The other front is the digitization of commercial elements such as marketing and sales, we are investing in technological platforms to reach the consumer directly, we have a direct Marketplace called ‘Más abrazos’ and we are strengthening marketing through the automation of our Sales force.

How is Colombia within the regional structure?

One of the company’s strategic pillars is growth in developing markets, because Kimberly has had a purpose for 150 years, which is to touch people’s lives, to deliver better care for a better world.

The global objective is to reach an additional 1,000 million people around the world and that volume comes mostly from these developing markets, such as Latin America and Colombia, as a strategic market for the company it is relevant because it is large in size, in consumption , population, development and investment.

The second thing is that Kimberly, as the second player in the diaper segment, indicates that we have growth opportunities in various ways, such as gaining market share from the leading brand or the third, and that is our focus; The other thing is to be disruptive in categories that are underdeveloped in the country and we have opportunities as a global company to bring the innovations that are coming out, investments in marketing that are very efficient in the world. We seek to reach the total population with our products that are essential for life.

How much of the production is sold outside the country?

We export about 30 percent of our production. We sell to Central America, the Caribbean, countries in the Andean region, Chile and sporadically to the United States. There are 26 countries including some markets in Europe and Asia. We export all products, we have a very complete matrix, which is a competitive advantage from the point of view of positioning in the region.

With the reestablishment of relations with Venezuela, are you looking towards that market?

We do not have operations there, but now a very important commercial window opens. Venezuela in the past was a very important market for Kimberly-Clark, today we have a presence with some exports through a strategic alliance with some commercial partners, but without a doubt, The reestablishment of commercial relations between the two countries will allow us a greater flow and bring the brands back to the Venezuelan consumer They were number one at the time.

What is the environmental issue?

We have a sustainability and sustainability strategy for 2030 that has several pillars on which they worked in a very defined way and Latin America is part of that work. We have a social impact agenda with brands hand in hand with Unicef, in the feminine, empowering women and breaking down discrimination and the taboo of menstruation.

With the Scott brand he worked on a program called ‘Bathrooms change lives’, around drinking water, hygiene and the transformation of latrines into bathrooms, among other initiatives. We are consuming 50 percent less water than what was consumed before and today the water that we return to the environment is better than that which we recover from the different rivers, especially at the Cauca factory, where we have purification plants.

And in energy we have our own electricity cogeneration plants, we do not consume energy from the Finally we work on gas emissions, on deforestation, since our products use one hundred percent raw materials or pulps from renewable or recycled cellulose origin, while in plastics we have an ambitious goal for 2030 to reduce first-use consumption by 50 percent.

More news

«We have not talked about ending oil exploitation contracts»: Minminas

The residents of these roads, to pay more than $13 billion for a new tax