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International Paper Company's Kraft pulp and paper mill in Georgetown, South Carolina. When built, this was the world's largest mill.

Basement of paper mill in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Pulp and paper manufacture involves a great deal of humidity, which presents a preventive maintenance and corrosion challenge.

A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from wood pulp and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier Machine or similar apparatus. It is a common misconception that paper mills are sources of odors. Pulp mills, not paper mills can be a source of malodorous air emissions.

In 105 AD, the first papermaking process was innovated in China, by the Han Dynasty Chinese court eunuch Cai Lun in the early 2nd century AD. The technology spread from East Asia to Europe by way of the Islamic world (see Battle of Talas). The earliest known paper mill is known to have operated in Baghdad, modern-day Iraq, as early as 794. After Baghdad, the paper-making process spread to Damascus, Egypt, and Morocco, and by the 10th century, it had replaced papyrus, wood, silk and parchment as the cheapest and most widespread writing medium in the Islamic world. In Europe, the first mention of rag-paper is in the tract of Peter, abbot of Cluny (1112 - 1150 AD), while the oldest recorded document on paper in Christian Europe is the 11th century Missal of Silos, whose paper was probably made in Islamic Spain.^[1] One of the first known paper mills in Europe was in Xativa (now Jativa) near Valencia, Spain, established around 1151 AD by the Muslim Moors. ^[2]

The undesirable odor (usually at pulp mills, which are a little different from paper mills) is caused principally by processing by-products, specifically the hydrogen sulfide and other reduced sulfur gases resulting from the cooking process. These airborne particles are not harmful to the health of the community in commonly occurring concentrations, but they are considered a nuisance. The Kraft process of reducing wood logs to their fibre constituent is primarily responsible for the odour, as opposed to the sulfite process.

Paper mills can be fully-integrated mills or smaller processing mills. The integrated mill will receive the whole forest log (or wood chips), process it down to the individual fiber level and into a 4% (approximately) pulp slurry, then process that pulp slurry into a sheet of paper. Non-integrated mills cannot process the log or wood chips but instead purchase preprocessed pulp slurry in a dried and baled form, known as market pulp, from pulp mills. The pulp bales are then rehydrated into a 4% solution in order to be processed into a sheet of paper.

The modern paper mill uses large amounts of energy, water, and wood in a highly efficient and extremely complex series of processes, using modern and sophisticated controls technology to produce a sheet of paper that can be used in incredibly diverse ways. Modern paper machines are very large and can be 500 feet in length, produce a sheet 400 inches wide, and operate at speeds of over 60 mph (100 km/h).^[3]

• Braviken Paper Mill, Norrköping, Sweden
• Italian Paper Mill Cartiere di Trevi
• Crane Paper Company, Dalton, Massachusetts (A large supplier of paper for the U.S. dollar)
• Curtis Paper Mill, Newark, Delaware (closed paper mill also known as the Nonantum Mill)
• Hurlburt Paper Mill, Lee, Massachusetts
• Sartell Paper Mill, Sartell, Minnesota
• Södra Cell Folla, Norway
• UPM Kymmene, Finland
• Portucel_Soporcel, Portugal
• New Forest Paper Mill LP, Canada

• Paper pollution

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• Paperweb.biz - Paper world directory and search engine for the pulp and paper world