Bill Sampson

Is the process of making paper the same?

Ceylon was a Chinese court official credited with inventing paper about 2,000 years ago.

So could you talk me through the process of how paper is made?

And here at the mill, we can see this bashing in action.

So the pulp is moving really quickly.

And then where's it getting squashed?

Whatever the raw material, it could be pulp from a tree or in this case mostly recycled materials, you need to break down the fibres to prepare them for their future life as a sheet of paper.

Once the fibres have been bashed, or to use the technical term, refined, this watery gloop is ready for the next step.

It's like a conveyor belt, a sieve conveyor belt.

That's interesting because it still, it kind of looks like just very wet paper, right?

But it's only 20% fibre.

That's right.

and then passing under a roll, and that roll is just squashing water out.

And it's, you know, it's strong enough to hold itself together.

It's sort of, at the end of the conveyor belt, it's coming off and sort of holding its own.

Oh, but someone here is, oh, he's torn a sheet off.

It's like very damp paper, but it's not totally falling apart.

The sheet torn off by the paper maker is very recognisably paper, even though at this point it's still about 60% water.

Most modern paper would now be dried further with heated rollers, but this particular type of paper is torn off and air dried.

But regardless of the method, once the paper is dry, for some reason it doesn't then just fall apart back into fibres.