Privileged Paper Making

Fresh River Kent water flows through the very heart of this creative manufacturing powerhouse and helps create paper and technical fibre products that grace everything from Selfridges bags to fighter jets. James Cropper PLC welcomed LA23NET with open arms and lab coats for a special hand-made paper experience that has never before been enjoyed by anyone ‘outside the industry’. This privilege opened our eyes to not only the large scale production of paper but to the early scientific stages that are then scaled up to produce the perfect British Legion Poppy Red or sunny Selfridge’s yellow on an astronomically large scale.

Experiencing the lab stage of the paper making process was mind-blowing from learning how light affects different pigments, to understanding how important the colour matching process is. Imagine trying to match a lipstick shade. Not when it’s wet. Not when it’s dry. But just in-between those two stages. That is what the experts at James Cropper PLC do for brands. Working out the perfect tone, shade and colour ratios before tonnes of beautifully made paper is manufactured.

To sum up the paper making process at Croppers in layman’s terms is almost to do the expertise and innovation a disservice but in the pursuit of knowledge here is our summary of how paper is made. For a better one give James Cropper PLC a tinkle, they really know what they’re doing…

How to make paper – as told by non-paper makers

Raw materials such as sustainably sourced wood fibres (and depending on the desired outcome even the fibres innovatively extracted from Costa’s used coffee cups) are added to River Kent water, expertly selected and quantified dyes are then added to create a vibrant and mesmeric porridge pulpy soup. Good old gravity helps drain the soup as it is is passed along a flat conveyor belt sieving, rolling, blotting and drying turning the once 99% water ‘paper soup’ in to 100% world-class paper.

Rock. Paper. Social.

The generosity of James Cropper PLC to our local business community didn’t end there though. A very special social media competition was running last night. The prize, a shout out for their business on James Cropper PLC’s facebook page for the best content posted using the #redefiningpaper hashtag. Competition was fierce and a surprising amount of Spielbergs were suddenly in the room! You can check out some of the superb social involvement here.

John McKeown of VidSmart UK was crowned the winner – Cropper’s social team loved his activity and creativity. Well done John!  Check out his awesome video right here.

 

Cropper’s will also be giving a special mention on their social pages to:

Pennington’s Coffee – they loved their enthusiasm

Rich Stevens of Real Design for his incredible close-up of the surface of paper!

We’d like to give our own special thanks to Victoria Sedgwick for her brilliant capturing of this and all our LA23NETs. She’s an angel!

Paper Chain

A world-class business needs world-class people; and knowledge, passion and pride flows as strong as the river through every single member of the Cropper’s team. LA23NET would like to give a special thanks to the team who looked after us last night – your expertise and warmth was overwhelming. Thank you.

Phil Wild – CEO 

Karen Wright – Personal Assistant 

Guides & Papermaking Team 

Bob Wilkinson  | Stuart Bell

Mark Lowther |  Mark Starrs

Joanne Storey  |  Alison Rigg

Julia Harrison  |  Adrian Gibson

Malcom Reekie  |  Bridget Wedderburn

David Nicholson  |  Ashleigh Fell

What’s up next?

Well it’s Warburtons with Windermere School. Need we say more?

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