Photos from throughout the mill's history filled the town hall. Photo / Leah Tebbutt
It was a staple in the Kawerau community for decades providing employment to the town built around it.
But now the town's Norske Skog Tasman paper mill has been laid to rest in a fitting "funeral".
Following the mill's closure at the end of June, past and present employees andmembers of the public were invited to celebrate the mill and its role in the Kawerau community for the last 68 years.
Past and present employees filled the Kawerau Town Hall on Saturday, some travelling for hours through the rain, to celebrate the end of an era.
The closure has been a long time coming as demand for the mill's sole product, newsprint, kept declining, made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic.
History lined the walls in the town hall at the weekend, with photos spanning from the mill's early construction stage in 1953 to the introduction of paper production in 1955, the 1987 earthquake and machine closures through the years.
Max Vowler soaked up the memories past while saying hello to familiar faces. An electrical engineer, Vowler started his 30-year stint at the mill in 1964.
"It was an excellent place to work. The wages were good and the accommodation was good and later on, they brought in a subsidised rent scheme where you were renting but you owned the house at the end.
"A lot of people really improved their style of living by working at the mill."
For 30 years Vowler was on-site in Kawerau and said there were many changes in that time as the company kept up with the modernising world.
"One of the biggest changes we found was when they changed from pneumatic control systems to electronics.
"We were all used to working with mechanical and pneumatic controls and all of a sudden we're faced with all these instruments and electronics. It was a big thing we had to learn to change."
The town of Kawerau was born after a 1951 Government and Fletcher Holdings decision to form the Tasman Pulp & Paper Company Limited as a joint venture.
By October 1953 the first house was built and newsprint production began two years later.
Fifteen million tonnes of paper have been made in the mill's time. The first log travelled across the bull chain at 1.20pm on February 16, 1956, then at 3.20pm the same day, the first cut on the band head rig took place.
Full production on what was once known as the largest pulp and paper facility in the world started four days later.