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A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags, and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt, all paper in a paper mill was made by hand, one sheet at a time, by specialized laborers.
Scholars have identified paper mills in Abbasid Dynasty-era Baghdad in 794–795. The evidence that waterpower was applied to papermaking at this time is a matter of scholarly debate.: In the Morocco city of Fes, Ibn Battuta speaks of "400 Millstone for paper". Since Ibn Battuta does not mention the use of water-power and such a number of water-mills would be grotesquely high, the passage is generally taken to refer to human or Horse mill.
Hill notes that paper mills appear in early Christian Catalonia documentation from the 1150s, which may imply Islamic origins, but that hard evidence is lacking.: Burns, however, has dismissed the case for early Catalan water-powered paper mills, after re-examination of the evidence.:
The identification of early hydraulic stamping mills in medieval documents from Fabriano, Italy, is also completely without substance.:
Clear evidence of a water-powered paper mill dates to 1282 in the Iberian Crown of Aragon. A decree by the Christian king Peter III addresses the establishment of a royal "molendinum", a proper hydraulic mill, in the paper manufacturing center of Xàtiva. This early hydraulic paper mill was operated by Muslims in the Moorish quarter of Xàtiva, though it appears to have been resented by sections of the local Muslim papermakering community; the document guarantees them the right to continue the way of traditional papermaking by beating the pulp manually and grants them the right to be exempted from work in the new mill.
The first permanent paper mill north of the Alps was established in Nuremberg by Ulman Stromer in 1390; it is later depicted in the lavishly illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle. From the mid-14th century onwards, European paper milling underwent a rapid improvement of many work processes.
The size of a paper mill prior to the use of industrial machines was described by counting the number of vats it had. Thus, a "one vat" paper mill had only one vatman, one coucher, and other laborers.
In 1809 at Apsley Mill, John Dickinson patented and installed another kind of paper machine. Rather than pouring a dilute pulp suspension onto an endlessly revolving flat wire, this machine used a cylinder covered in wire as the mould. A cylindrical mould is partially submerged in the vat, containing a pulp suspension, and then, as the mould rotates, the water is sucked through the wire, leaving a thin layer of fibres deposited on the cylinder. These cylinder-mould machines, as they are named, were strong competition for Fourdrinier machine makers. They were the type of machine first used by the North American paper industry. It is estimated that by 1850 UK paper production had reached 100,000 tons. Later developments increased the size and capacity of machines as well as seeking high volume alternative pulp sources from which paper could be reliably produced. Many of the earlier mills were small and had been located in rural areas. The movement was to larger mills in, or near, urban areas closer to their suppliers of the raw materials. They were often situated near a port where the raw material was brought in by ship and the paper markets. By the end of the century there were less than 300 UK paper mills, employing 35,000 people and producing 650,000 tons of paper per year.
In the 1920s, Nancy Baker Tompkins represented large paper manufacturing companies, like Hammermill Paper Company, Honolulu Paper Company and Appleton Coated Paper Company to promote sales to the distributors of paper products. It was said to be the only business of its kind in the world, and was started in 1931 by Tompkins. It prospered in spite of the business depression.
"Log driver" were conducted on local rivers to send the logs to the mills. By the late 20th and early 21st-century, paper mills began to close, and the log drives became a dying craft. Due to the addition of new machinery, many millworkers were laid off and many of the historic paper mills closed.
The modern paper mill uses large amounts of energy, water, and wood pulp in an efficient and complex series of processes, and control technology to produce a sheet of paper that can be used in diverse ways. Modern paper machines can be in length, produce a sheet wide, and operate at speeds of more than . The two main suppliers of paper machines are Metso and Voith.
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