Kimberly-Clark U.K. and Ireland, a manufacturer of household name brands including Andrex® and Kleenex®, is the first major consumer products company in the U.K. to make a significant commitment to green hydrogen.
The company will partner with energy companies Carlton Power and HYRO, a joint venture between Octopus Energy Generation and RES, and is investing over £125 million into two plants in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, and Northfleet, Kent.
The two plants produce nearly one billion Andrex toilet rolls and over 150 million boxes of Kleenex tissues every year. Through the investment, Kimberly-Clark expects to see a 50% reduction versus its 2024 consumption of natural gas across its U.K. production lines starting in 2027.
These two green hydrogen projects are being supported with funding from the U.K. government after being selected for the Government’s Hydrogen Production Business Model (HPBM) and Net Zero Hydrogen Fund (NZHF), a global first.
The Barrow hydrogen project will supply 100 GWh of hydrogen per year while the Northfleet project will supply 47 GWh annually. The total displacement of natural gas with hydrogen will reduce carbon emissions by 28,500 tons per year.
“This is a significant investment into a green hydrogen solution, and alongside other investments that support our ambition to move our U.K. manufacturing operations to 100% renewable energy by 2030,” said Dan Howell, Vice President and Managing Director at Kimberly-Clark UK & Ireland, in a statement. “Now is the right time for us to tap into hydrogen’s significant potential, improving energy supply and our decarbonization needs. We are delighted to be the first U.K. consumer goods manufacturer to really embrace green hydrogen, showing that an energy intensive industry can take the lead and overcome the technical challenge and adopt green hydrogen at scale.”
The initiatives are expected to enable Kimberly-Clark UK and Ireland to achieve a total reduction of its operational GHG emissions by more than 80% in 2027 versus a 2015 baseline. These improvements will also help Kimberly-Clark meet its sustainability goals to achieve a 50% reduction of absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions globally from a 2015 base year by 2030.