The industrial process to convert bagasse into paper was developed in 1937 at a small laboratory in Hacienda Paramonga, a sugar mill on the coast of Peru owned by the W.R. Grace Company. Using a promising method invented by Clarence Birdseye, the company bought an old paper mill in Whippany, New Jersey and shipped bagasse from Peru there to test the viability of the process on an industrial scale. The first bagasse paper manufacturing machines were designed in Germany and installed in the Cartavio sugar cane plant in 1938.