The dignified convoy moved from the West Sands Road, past the R&A clubhouse, along The Scores and Murray Park into the centre of St Andrews where they congregated at Madras College's South Street building.

There were banners and flags, but no pipes and drums. No celebration this, and the sheer numbers who had turned up said it all.

Visitors and Saturday shoppers who stopped to watch might not have known Curtis Fine Papers in Guardbridge had closed its doors, but, when told, some called out their support.

Others shook the marchers' hands or embraced them. If it turns out that the mill can't be saved — and former managing director Keith Chapman has put the chances of that at no more than 30 per cent — no-one who was there, could fail to realise just how many families have been hurt by the close-down.

Addressing the crowd in front of Madras College later, Mr Chapman paid tribute to the workforce, many of whom had voluntarily gone back to the building to help clean up and close everything down and help sell existing stock.

"You are the most fantastic workforce I've ever had the priviledge of working with," he told them.

"Everybody does work well together and it's sad it's taken an event like this to underline these fantastic skills and years of knowledge of paper-making.

"In many cases like this, the workforce would have sabotaged the machinery. But everything has been very responsibly handled.

"The mill is sitting there, ready to start again and nothing would give me more pleasure than to lead the march back through the mill gates. I can assure you that no stone will be left unturned in our efforts.

"We will do everything we can, but I don't want to raise false hope."
Reluctant to "name names" of those interested in case of prejudicing the situation, he confirmed there had been eight seriously interested parties which included: "some major paper-makers".

However he pointed out that the current credit crunch was making life difficult for people who might want to step in and acquire the mill.

Local politicians also pledged to continue doing all they could to help in any way possible to help find a buyer and support the workers.

In response to a question about pensions, Mr Chapman said he couldn't give detailed advice, and any queries should be addressed to the adminstrators KPMG.

However, he confirmed there had been two different types of pension at Curtis — the final salary scheme which had been closed in 2003 and to which it was later confirmed by finance director Robin Paul that around 1000 employees belonged, and a money purchase scheme which had replaced it.

The money purchase scheme was unaffected as whatever was put in by employees and the company would buy the benefits.

Regarding the final salary scheme, he said there would be a deficit in that and trustees would be lodging a claim as creditors.

In the meantime, the fund would be transferred into a pension protection fund.

A positive aspect of the timing of the recent closure, he said, was that it came close to the annual summer close-down and very few customers had been inconvenienced.

"There remains a window of opportunity for someone to buy the mill in the next week to 10 days before our customers start wanting supplies when they come back from their summer break."

Yesterday (Thursday) Mr Chapman was still hopeful that a buyer might be found and told the Citizen there were still people interested. But he declined to go into any detail as to how many there were.

He said he and fellow director Robin Paul had been in agreement that calling in the administrators was the right course of action.

However, a spokesperson for administrators KPMG told the Citizen yesterday (Thursday) no-one had expressed serious interest in buying the mill.

"There is really no update to give, the administrators are progressing with the wind-down and while there has been a lot of support from local partners, there have been no serious offers from anyone wanting to take the business on."