The paper milling industry is something that many of us are not familiar with, yet it is an industry that produces many of the things we use every day. Books, cardboard boxes, shopping receipts, tissues for your cold, and printer paper all begin life in a paper mill, starting from raw plant fiber and being transformed into sheets or boxes of packaging.

Mills today use wood as their primary fiber source. Logs with or without bark are cut into wood chips, then cooked and ground-into a broth of cellulose fibers called pulp. There are two methods used to manufacture pulp. Logs are stripped of bark and cut into small pieces called wood chips. These chips are then processed into pulp, a wet mass of cellulose fibers. The pulp can be made mechanically or chemically. Mechanically produced pulp is often used in cheap products like newsprint and contains up to 95% of the original wood material. The pulping process utilises heat and chemicals to break down and remove lignin, a binding chemical found naturally within wood, producing stronger and cleaner pulp which is ideal for producing high quality writing paper and packaging material.

Once pulped the paper material is washed and screened to remove dirt and any other impurities. Depending on the product being made some mills add dyes, fillers or coatings. Additionally different grades and types of used paper products are mixed together throughout the recycling process. Used paper products can be dissolved in water, have the ink removed and used to make a wide variety of new products for consumption. Recycled products prevent waste from ending up anyway and conserve natural resources.

The first step in the production of paper and cardboard is to pulp, that is to say to grind up, the raw materials. This resultant material is mixed with water and placed on a moving screen. As the water empties the fibres start to adhere together and form a thin sheet which is then subjected to a series of rolls. Excess moisture is removed and then the material is passed through dryers where the remainder of the water is evaporated using heat.

Paper and pulp products are finished, smoothed, rolled, and cut to the appropriate size in this section. In addition to making the paper more luminous, a coating may be applied. The products of this section are bags, cartons, toilet paper, tissue products, paper towels, and notebook paper.

Paper mills are no longer just paper makers. The industry is shifting to become more environmentally efficient. Many paper mills are using recycled fiber and clean energy in their operations. In addition, many mills are working to ensure that the forestry companies that supply them practice sustainable forestry practices.

From online purchases that need to be packaged all the way to perishable goods, books, labels and personal care products that all need to be wrapped in paper Ð there are so many different products that need to be enveloped in paper. With paper products comes the production of the paper itself. We rarely think about this, but the making of paper is a highly technological and massive industrial process found in paper mills.