For as long as humans have existed, we’ve been using colour to express ourselves.
Social interactions have evolved, whole languages have emerged and died out, but colour is still there. From the earliest cave paintings first daubed tens of thousands of years ago to the vivid digital adverts designed to pop up on the latest HDR screens, our appetite to enrich our world with colour endures as a quintessentially human trait.
As such a universal part of the human experience, no one can truly claim to ‘own’ colour. But it does have a home – James Cropper’s paper mill on the edge of the English Lake District. There is perhaps no more fitting locale for the home of colour. Our mill is surrounded by natural colours of every shade, from the lush greens of field, fern and foliage to the greys and browns of our ancient riverside buildings – all enriched, for nearly 170 years, by the spectrum of coloured papers made within.
Growing up in the home of colour
I feel incredibly lucky to have been born into a family with such an ancient association with an industry, company, and place. ‘The mill’, as we call it in the family, has been a part of my life since my earliest memories, but I have only latterly realised how vanishingly rare the business truly is. There are barely any historic mills still operating in Great Britain, let alone in the paper industry, and none led by the same family in the same place.
But keeping the legacy going demands that I constantly look forward rather than back. Our existence must be earned every day. My greatest desire has always been for the business to feel perpetually young, and I’m fortunate that we are still reinventing ourselves 180 years on, evolving from a traditional mill into a global innovator in advanced materials and sustainable paper and packaging.
Two generations ago, everything we made was for printing and writing – hardly a recipe for success in today’s digital age. We are still here as we’ve transformed ourselves into one of the world’s most diverse materials manufacturers serving markets as varied as aerospace, renewable energy, and luxury retail.
And, as the last remaining manufacturer of coloured paper in the UK, it’s a role we take seriously. Colour is the one universal form of communication that has persisted throughout the entirety of human existence. We use it to express who we are and what we believe. It can dramatically alter the way we think and feel, and just a glimpse of a familiar shade can trigger the emergence of long-forgotten memories.
Upholding a British tradition
Throughout our history, James Cropper has explored the infinite spectrum of colour, investing in our own colour lab to offer a suite of bespoke colour-matching services, and building a vast portfolio of over 2,000 individual live shades on-site – including 184 blacks and 62 whites. There is as much variety and skill in mastering whites and blacks as there is for every shade in between.
The Cropper family were originally Quakers, the famously trustworthy non-conformist sect, and I believe this has inspired our values down the generations. Acting with care and responsibility are core values of James Cropper today and inform how we interact with our people, customers, community, and environment.
Our third core value – to be forward-thinking – is similarly deep-rooted. From the earliest years of our business, we have sought out new technologies and markets as they evolved, including railways and, by 1900, insulating paper for electric cables.
However, perhaps our most important decision was to begin making coloured papers in the 1850s in response to the chronic shortage of good paper-making fibre. We found unwanted and dirty waste fibres and transformed them into a range of coloured papers, making use of the new and emerging dye industry. Our founder and my 3x great-grandfather always maintained that “nothing opens itself out to such constant development as paper,” and this belief is still a guiding light for us to this day.
The story of colour is one that’s worth preserving. But while there were once dozens of colour paper mills in the UK, today we are the sole survivor. That means we have a singular responsibility to preserve the art and craft of coloured paper. James Cropper is also one of only a handful of colour mills globally.
However, no other papermaker in the world allows customers to customise their colours and other specifications to such an extent, and could never begin to do this: it has taken generations to build this capability. Without us, anyone wanting coloured paper would have a much more limited choice, so I feel it is fundamentally important to preserve this.
Ultimately, keeping this tradition alive in Britain means safeguarding a unique capability that supports creative industries, sustains local employment, and champions sustainable production. It’s not just important to us, it’s essential to the future of our industry in Britain and beyond.
Putting the ‘u’ back into ‘colour’
For decades, we’ve honed that expertise and supported it with state-of-the-art technology that enables us to match colours across any number of different fibre-based materials. The lab lets us test different options in collaboration with customers, demonstrating our proprietary dyed-in-the-fibre process, before quickly scaling up the exact colour formulation into full production. Over the years, the technology and science behind this process have evolved, but the goal remains the same – to bring the customer’s vision to life.
This continual journey of discovery and refinement is what led us to Coloursource, a curated portfolio of 50 signature shades that celebrates our legacy as the originators of coloured paper. This isn’t just a product launch; it’s an invitation. Coloursource brings together decades of colour expertise into one unified brand, offering unmatched vibrancy, durability, and creative potential.
What makes this moment even more exciting is that for the first time, James Cropper are directly associated with the product. For over 50 years, people have known and loved a very well-known coloured paper, without realising it was made by us. Now, we’re stepping forward and owning that story. It gives us the opportunity to help our present and future customers explore new creative directions and push the boundaries of what’s possible in coloured paper.
We’re also opening our doors, literally. We’re inviting customers to visit our Burneside mill, the home of coloured paper since 1856, to experience the development process first-hand. It’s about collaboration, storytelling, and giving our customers the tools to make these colours their own.
Coloursource is more than a product, it’s a statement of intent. We’re not just preserving tradition: we’re evolving it.
Our distinguished past is something we celebrate at James Cropper. However, we’re not in the habit of looking back – we use our unprecedented experience to make a material difference in the present, so we can deliver a brighter future.
