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orporate decision-makers must still be convinced, but the Mobile Industrial Development Board is convinced enough to have offered IAMC member company Kimberly-Clark Corp. some $1.7 million in various tax abatements for a proposed $38-million expansion project at its 66-year-old tissue and paper towel mill in the Alabama port city. The project, which could potentially add up to 33 jobs to the existing payroll of 800, would involve the addition of a fiber recycling facility as well as expansion of paper towel capacity, according to the Mobile Register.
   While the company closed a pulp mill in Mobile in 1999, by 2002 it credited product improvements and fiber-supply diversification in Mobile for at least part of the 18-percent increase in sales volume of its Scott bathroom tissue. In its third-quarter 2005 earnings report, the company noted the continuing strong performance of its tissue brands in North America.
   Expansion or no expansion, Kimberly-Clark workers in Mobile have been at the forefront of helping their community and each other in the wake of the Gulf Coast hurricanes. In the meantime the greater Mobile area is seeing a raft of industrial investment, including projects from Northrop Grumman, Austal Ltd. and a $300-million container terminal joint venture between Maersk's APM Terminals and CMA CGM's Terminal Link.
   Leonard Anderson, director, and Greg Saylor, business analyst, are both IAMC members from Kimberly-Clark. Angela Wier, vice president of the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, is also an IAMC member.