Kimberly-Clark is widening its search for alternatives to conventional wood pulp, with a new research program examining whether hesperaloe, a drought-tolerant desert plant, could supply fiber for future tissue products.

The research adds another option to the company’s long-running work on alternative fibers. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Kimberly-Clark has invested about $250 million over roughly two decades in research aimed at reducing its dependence on traditional forest-derived materials.

The company has also reported reaching an interim goal of cutting its use of natural forest fiber by half as it works toward removing the material from its product portfolio.

For tissue manufacturers, the significance goes beyond one plant species. Wood pulp remains a core raw material across the sector, but concerns around forestry practices, carbon emissions, raw-material availability and supply-chain resilience are putting more attention on what else can realistically feed high-volume tissue operations.

Hesperaloe is now one of the materials being put to that test.

Why Hesperaloe Is Being Considered for Tissue Production

Native to dry environments, hesperaloe has attracted research interest partly because it can grow with comparatively low water requirements while producing long fibers that may be suitable for pulp and paper applications.

Previous academic work on Hesperaloe funifera found alpha-cellulose content of about 52% alongside relatively low lignin levels. Researchers concluded that those characteristics could make the plant suitable as a raw material for cellulosic pulp.

Low lignin content matters because lignin must typically be separated from cellulose during pulping. A lower concentration can potentially influence chemical requirements, processing and pulp brightness, although laboratory advantages do not automatically translate into commercially viable tissue production.

Earlier experiments have already shown that hesperaloe can be converted into pulp.

In one body of research, dried and ground plant material was treated in a reactor using diethanolamine under different temperatures, chemical concentrations and processing times. Researchers then separated and washed the resulting pulp before mechanically fiberizing, refining and screening it.

Paper sheets produced from the pulp were evaluated for properties including tensile strength, tear strength, burst strength, stretch and brightness.

Pulp yields generally ranged from around 50% into the upper-50% range depending on processing conditions, with temperature identified as an important factor affecting yield.

Those results establish technical potential, but Kimberly-Clark faces a much broader commercial test.

A tissue manufacturer cannot judge a new fiber on cellulose yield alone. Any alternative must support attributes including softness, absorbency, wet and dry strength, appearance and machine runnability while performing consistently across large manufacturing volumes.

Cost is another hurdle. Fiber pricing, chemicals, energy use, logistics and processing requirements all contribute to the economics of finished tissue. Research has also suggested that some characteristics of hesperaloe fiber could require additional refining energy to achieve targeted paper-strength properties.

As a result, the central question is shifting from whether hesperaloe can be made into paper to whether it can be made into the right paper, at the right scale and price.

Scaling Alternative Fiber Means Rethinking the Supply Chain

Moving from laboratory pulp to commercial tissue would require more than changes inside a paper mill.

If hesperaloe were adopted at significant scale, manufacturers would need access to a dependable agricultural supply base capable of producing large quantities of the crop year after year.

That creates questions around land availability, cultivation, harvesting, regional water use and potential ecosystem impacts. Manufacturers would also have to consider where the crop is grown in relation to mills, since transportation costs and emissions could affect both the business case and environmental performance.

Existing manufacturing assets present another issue. Pulping and tissue operations designed around wood-based fiber may need process adjustments or additional equipment to handle agricultural fibers efficiently.

NRDC sees alternative fiber development as one route for reducing tissue-sector pressure on Canada’s boreal forest and other ecosystems associated with virgin wood supply.

“This is just the beginning, but signals a potentially market-shifting breakthrough. If Kimberly-Clark can scale up production of this fiber sustainably and without displacing other native ecosystems, this could alleviate significant pressure on the forests currently used to make tissue products. We also encourage Kimberly-Clark to use this same innovative spirit to continue increasing its use of recycled materials, which have the lowest carbon footprint of all tissue fibers.” said Shelley Vinyard, Director of Global Nature at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council).

The organization has also called for manufacturers to increase recycled content rather than treating agricultural fiber as a substitute for recycling efforts.

That means the industry’s emerging fiber mix could become more diversified rather than simply moving from one virgin raw material to another.

Competitive pressure may accelerate that shift. NRDC has also called on other large tissue manufacturers, including Procter & Gamble, to increase investment in fiber innovation as companies face greater scrutiny over the materials used in disposable paper products.

For Kimberly-Clark, however, hesperaloe is still a research project. It should not yet be read as evidence that products such as Kleenex, Cottonelle or Scott are about to move away from wood pulp at commercial scale.

Several major questions remain, including agricultural output, manufacturing performance, infrastructure requirements, environmental trade-offs and total delivered cost.

Those unanswered questions are precisely why the project matters to manufacturers.

Fiber sourcing is increasingly becoming a strategic issue tied to supply security, production economics and sustainability targets rather than simply a purchasing decision. Hesperaloe may or may not become a mainstream tissue raw material, but its development highlights a broader shift in how manufacturers are thinking about where their next generation of fiber could come from.

If the crop — or another agricultural fiber — can meet the industry’s demanding performance and cost requirements, future tissue supply chains could rely on a much wider mix of raw materials than wood pulp alone.