Reply To: Forth Mill -Kilbagie

Scotland’s Lost Industries By Michael Meighan Originally published: 2012
Displayed on Google Books by permission of Amberley Publishing Limited. Copyright.

Kilbagie at Kincardine, also in Fife, is another paper mill that once was a distillery. Founded in 1720 by John Stein, Kilbagie was said to be the largest in Scotland at the time and produced until 1845. Kilbagie was famous as the site of the first continuous still, invented in 1826 by Robert Stein. It went bankrupt, said to be because of excessive customs dues.
After some time as a fertilizer factory, James Weir started the production of esparto-based fine papers in 1875, on machines supplied tothe mill by Bertrams of Sciennes, a 92-inch machine being the largest in the country at the time. In 1941, there were four machines at Kilbagie and they were also producing newsprint.
Gestetner had been a customer and eventually bought the mill in 1965 and then modernised it. Ownership changed to an Australian firm, the Pratt Group of Melbourne, before being taken over by Inveresk in 1995, to produce fine papers.
One commentator has described Inveresk as the undertaker of the Scottish paper industry. Having taken over a number of companies, it shut down mills in Musselburgh; Carrongrove in Denny; Caldwell’s in Inverkeithing; Westfield in Torphichen; and Kilbagie. Inveresk closed Kilbagie in 2001. The plant is now partly a waste management site.

Additional information:

Post 2001 the mill was purchased by LPC (Leicester Paper Company) to use the deinking plant to produce wet-lap pulp for their tissue mill in England.

There was a serious mis-match in the type of “deinking” needed. The Inveresk focus was brightness while keeping the filler to improve the yield while for tissue the need was primarily for low ash.

Additional problems were water shortage, see below, and difficulties meeting the environmental requirements of IPPC.

LPC eventually shut their operation in 2005.