SOUTH AFRICA – Tomra, a Norwegian multinational corporation and provider of reverse vending machine and sensor-based sorting solution has opened new regional headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa.
According to the company, the move strengthens its commitment to its customers in South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania.
Albert du Preez, Senior Vice-President at Tomra, indicated that, “This investment affirms Tomra Food’s wholehearted and long-term commitment to South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania. These are growing markets that we take very seriously.”
This initiative is designed to enhance customer care through even better technical support, service, and training, to ensure prompt availability of spare parts and improve operational efficiencies by bringing together under one roof all three TOMRA business divisions: Food, Recycling and Mining.
The company’s new facilities are housed in a two-story, 1,800 square-metre building which accommodates offices, a warehouse, spare parts area, two training rooms, and three additional meeting rooms.
In addition, the company has also availed room for demonstrating sensor-based sorting technologies.
Norman Smith, Area Sales Manager, said, “The new premises in Johannesburg highlight our dedication to the African market, and our commitment to continue building our food division in this region. Our new offices will act as the sales and after-sales hub for Sub-Saharan Africa, and in the future potentially for the rest of Africa.”
“Having the facilities for customer training and product demonstrations will help more food businesses in the region recognise and benefit from our world-class solutions.”
Tomra Food and the two other brands in the Tomra Food family, BBC Technologies and Compac, offer high-grade sorting and grading technologies and integrated post-harvest solutions.
These include the world’s most advanced grading, sorting, peeling, and analytical technologies for fruits, nuts, vegetables, potato products, grains and seeds, dried fruit, and seafood.
Such solutions are of ever-increasing importance in Africa, as they are on other continents around the world, because of the need to feed growing populations through more efficient food production.
As an example of growing demand for these technologies, Tomra says that its Compac brand has witnessed dramatic growth in South Africa in the last four years primarily because of the citrus industry investing in Spectrim grading technology. This is increasing productivity on pack-out of Class 1 fruit by an average of 12%
Compac’s Regional Director for Asia and South Africa, James Flocchini, revealed that “Compac is installing a training/demo machine at the facility.
“This will provide for technology demonstrations and classroom training of new and existing customers to support the investments being made by citrus, avocado, apple, tomato and stone fruit packers.”
Over 8,000 units are installed at food growers, packers and processors around the world for fruits, nuts, vegetables, potato products, grains and seeds, dried fruit, meat and seafood.
The company’s mission is to enable its customers to improve returns, gain operational efficiencies and ensure a safe food supply via smart, useable technologies.
