(Photo courtesy of Kimberly-Clark)

Kimberly-Clark Corporation, a producer of personal care products, announced it is expanding its operations in Aiken County.

The company’s investment of over $200 million will create more than 150 jobs, according to Gov. Henry McMaster’s office.

“This investment represents the strong progress we are making on our end-to-end supply chain transformation,” said Kimberly-Clark Chief Supply Chain Officer Tamera Fenske.

Fenske added, “By bringing together manufacturing and distribution under one automated roof, we are building a more agile, responsive and resilient operating model that will enhance service levels for our retail partners. Beech Island is the largest facility in our manufacturing network, so this new investment will drive impact at scale.” 

Founded in 1872, Kimberly-Clark's well-known brands, including Cottonelle, Huggies, Kleenex, Scott and more, are sold in over 175 countries.

The company is headquartered in Texas and has more than 40,000 employees worldwide.

Kimberly-Clark will add 1.1 million square feet to its existing facility at 246 Old Jackson Highway in Beech Island.

Officials said the expansion will streamline Kimberly-Clark’s distribution footprint, significantly increasing its ability to ship directly from its mega-manufacturing facility located on the same site.

The officials said the facility will leverage advanced robotics, artificial intelligence-powered logistics systems and high-density automated storage to dramatically improve operational efficiencies.

Established in 1968, the Beech Island manufacturing facility is the company’s largest globally.

Operations are expected to be online in the second quarter of 2027. Those interested in joining Kimberly-Clark should go to the company’s careers page.

In 2024, Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) continued to make meaningful progress on its energy modernization strategy, investing in new infrastructure and collaborating with stakeholders to achieve constructive outcomes across its jurisdictions, President and Chief Executive Officer Harry Sideris told investors during the company's annual shareholder meeting May, 1, 2025.  

"The path forward is clear as we navigate this decade of record infrastructure build and load growth," he said. "We remain focused on delivering value to our shareholders while meeting our customers' energy demands – now and into the future."

Sideris cited several milestones:

* "Our capital plan reflects $83 billion of investments over the next five years – one of the largest in the regulated industry – to meet growing demand while increasing reliability and affordability for our customers."

* "We invested in innovative grid improvements to enhance reliability and resiliency, which helped to avoid more than 2.3 million customer outages and more than 11 million hours of total outage time over the course of the year."

* "We delivered constructive outcomes in four rate cases in the Carolinas, Florida and Indiana. These rulings approve $45 billion of historic and future rate-based investments to create value for customers and shareholders."

* "We advanced new generation through our integrated resource plans in North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana and Kentucky."

* "We moved forward with plans to add 5 gigawatts of new natural gas generation across our jurisdictions through 2029."

* "And we partnered with TVA, GE Hitachi and others in the industry to help advance emerging technologies, including small modular reactors."

In his first shareholder meeting as CEO, Sideris also reinforced the strength of the company's fundamentals.

"All of our strategic progress in 2024 was underpinned by a strong foundation and track record of safety and operational excellence, including our response to the most significant hurricane season we have ever experienced in our company's history," said Sideris.

He attributed the company's successful response to back-to-back hurricanes to the unwavering commitment of its 26,000 employees and utility partners, enhanced communications with customers and stakeholders, and strategic preparation.

"These efforts included increasing our collaboration with state, local and federal officials and investing more than $10 billion in grid resiliency and storm hardening across our jurisdictions over the last three years," he added.  

Also at the meeting:

* Shareholders elected all 14 director nominees to the company's Board of Directors.

* A nonbinding shareholder proposal regarding a request to amend the company's certificate of incorporation to remove a supermajority vote requirement received the support of a majority of votes represented.

* A second nonbinding shareholder proposal requesting Duke Energy report annually to shareholders on its net-zero-related activities and progress didn’t receive the support of a majority of votes represented.

Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), a software company focused on powering social impact, announced the promotion of Chad Anderson to executive vice president and chief financial officer (CFO).

Anderson will oversee the company's financial reporting and controls, and investor relations. 

Officials said Tony Boor, who has served as Blackbaud's CFO for 14 years, will transition to a new role as executive vice president of corporate development and strategy, focused on advancing Blackbaud's long-term value and driving enterprise-wide strategies that maximize impact and efficiency.

Said Mike Gianoni, president, CEO and vice chairman of the board of directors for Blackbaud: "Chad is a highly accomplished global finance executive and a 12-year veteran of Blackbaud, with deep knowledge of our business, our customers and the industry. He has played a key role in maturing, modernizing, and improving the efficiency of our financial organization and has driven enterprise-wide initiatives critical to our company's future.”

Gianoni added, “We want to thank Tony for establishing a first-class finance organization over the past 14 years,” and added he was pleased Boor will be staying on in a new role to help ensure a smooth transition and continue to drive the company’s success and operational excellence.

Anderson joined Blackbaud in 2013 and most recently was chief accounting officer, overseeing accounting operations and ensuring the company's financial health and compliance.

Prior to that, he was corporate controller, responsible for the company's global financial operations.

Before joining Blackbaud, Anderson was an executive at Brightpoint Inc., a global provider of mobile device lifecycle services to the wireless industry. There, he served as vice president of finance for international operations and then chief financial officer of the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. 

Boor joined Charleston, South Carolina-based Blackbaud as CFO in 2011.

Prior to Blackbaud, he was CFO of Brightpoint Inc. He has also held roles as CFO and CIO of Expo New Mexico, controller of Day Dream Publishing, and worked as a CPA for public accounting firms, including Ernst & Young and KPMG.

Both Anderson and Boor will continue to serve on Blackbaud's executive leadership team.

Serving the nonprofit and education sectors, companies committed to social responsibility and individual change makers, Blackbaud's software is built to accelerate impact in fundraising, nonprofit financial management, digital giving, grantmaking, corporate social responsibility and education management. 

NFIB’s April jobs report found that 34 percent (seasonally adjusted) of small business owners reported job openings they could not fill in April, down six points from March, the lowest since January 2021.

“Small business owners remained open to hire and grow their workforce in April,” NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said. “While the percent of open positions decreased a bit, Main Street firms are still struggling to find qualified applicants for their plentiful open positions.”

State-specific data isn’t available, but NFIB State Director Ben Homeyer said, “The demand for workers remains strong, too many South Carolina small businesses are struggling to find qualified workers. That makes it hard for these businesses to grow, meet consumer demand, and serve their communities.”

Nationwide, 56 percent of small business owners reported hiring or trying to hire in April, up three points from March.

Twenty-eight percent of owners reported few qualified applicants for their open positions and 19 percent reported none.

Twenty-nine percent have openings for skilled workers (down four points) and 13 percent have openings for unskilled labor (unchanged for the third consecutive month).

Job openings were the highest in the construction, transportation, and manufacturing sectors.

Job openings in the wholesale industry rose 16 points from the prior month to 36 percent.

A seasonally adjusted net 13 percent of owners plan to create new jobs in the next three months, up one point from March.

The percent of small business owners reporting labor quality as their top operating problem was unchanged from March at 19 percent.

Labor costs reported as the single most important problem for business owners fell three points from March to 8 percent.

Seasonally adjusted, a net 33 percent of small business owners reported raising compensation in April, down five points from March.

A net 17 percent (seasonally adjusted) plan to raise compensation in the next three months, down two points from March and the lowest since March 2021.

Click here to read the entire NFIB Jobs Report.