1970s
On April 1, 1972, TOMRA was officially founded by the Planke family. By the end of 1972, TOMRA had installed 29 machines in Norway. The success of those machines soon began to generate interest abroad. By 1973, TOMRA had entered into several distribution agreements for markets in Europe and the United States.
From 1972 to 1976, TOMRA’s revenues grew from 700,000 NOK to 6.9 million NOK. The first major sales breakthrough happened in 1974 when the Swedish state-owned wine retailer Systembolaget ordered 100 machines, specially adapted to the conveyor equipment that was already installed in their sales outlets.
When the bottle recognition technology was released in 1977, growth really began to take off. The launch of the first self-programmable RVM, the Tomra SP, positioned TOMRA far ahead of competition and well prepared for the entry into the 1980s.
1980s
After the stock listing in 1985, optimism ruled as TOMRA positioned itself for growth in the US. Macro-economic conditions wanted otherwise. The Soviet Union dumped millions of tons of aluminum on the world market in 1985, leading to a dramatic drop in the aluminum price. As the aluminum prices plummeted by over 60 percent in four months, there was little incentive left to recycle aluminum cans in non-deposit markets. The substantial financial losses suffered by TOMRA forced the company to abandon most of its US activities in 1986.
Despite losses in the US, TOMRA’s financial supporters still believed in the business potential of the company. From pre-tax losses of 129.6 million NOK in 1986, TOMRA bounced back to deliver a profit of 10.3 million NOK the year after. During this period, TOMRA returned to its roots, concentrating its efforts on solidifying its strong European position and maintaining its leading edge in product development.
The last three years of the 1980s saw TOMRA introduce its next generation RVM, the Tomra 300, revenues increase with 62 percent from 1987 to 1989, and a careful reentry into the US, generating a revenue of 12.1 million NOK in 1989.
1990s
The acquisition of material handling company NEROC in 1992 marked the entry into a new era. Before this acquisition, all of TOMRA’s revenues had come from sales and service of RVMs. TOMRA now begun an effort to evolve its business model into the full container recycling value chain, which includes collection, pick-up, processing, material trading, recycling and production of new containers.
During the 1990s, measures were taken to improve efficiency and reduce costs. While the most significant was the gathering of all production in the new headquarters in Norway, efforts were also begun to make the production assembly method more efficient by allowing for delivery of machine components only when an actual order was being prepared for assembly.
In the last five years of the decade, TOMRA’s annual revenues increased from 501 million NOK to 2.1 billion NOK, representing an average annual increase of 46 percent. The most significant factor behind this growth was TOMRA’s growing presence in the United States. By 1999, sales in the US accounted for more than half of total revenues.
On the technology side, a new milestone was reached in 1997 with the launch of the T600. Not since the launch of the Tomra SP in 1977 had the market been introduced to a greater leap in RVM technology. Incorporating a number of innovations including a new container recognition system, horizontal container in-feed, a built-in modem and an advanced graphics display, the T600 introduced a more versatile and user-friendly platform that could easily be configured to meet the need of the shop.
By the end of the decade, TOMRA had developed into a truly international corporation, with over 1700 employees working in 34 different countries and 46 separate markets.
2000s
During the first 30 years of its history, TOMRA focused on growing reverse vending business in markets with deposit systems for beverage packaging. In 2000, the company saw that it would need to develop a more comprehensive business platform in order to meet its growth targets.
Efforts included reverse vending projects in Japan and Brazil, but the most notable developments came through a number of strategic acquisitions: TiTech in 2004, the Orwak Group in 2005, Commodas in 2006 and Ultrasort in 2008. Revenues within this new segment of Industrial Processing Technology more than doubled from 379 million NOK in 2005, to 793 million NOK in 2008.
The major event of the decade was the implementation of a deposit system for non-refillable containers in Germany, which got TOMRA flying into the latter half of the period. In 2006, TOMRA delivered approximately 8,800 new reverse vending systems to Germany alone. That accounts for about thrice as much as total volume worldwide in a normal year at the time, and Germany has been a key market for TOMRA ever since.
2010s
Having worked on developing process analytics for the food industries with QVision, it was not a far-fetched idea for TOMRA to venture further into the food segment. The first acquisition of the decade, Odenberg, brought to the table unique, patented technology and leading market positions in several fast-growing segments of the food sorting and processing industry. With the acquisition of BEST Sorting in 2012, TOMRA gained a position as one of the world’s leading food sorters and an expanded technology portfolio unrivalled by competitors.
Through a significant number of acquisitions, TOMRA had grown into a considerably global company since the first part of the 2000s. In order to galvanize the combined strength of the various subsidiaries, it was decided in 2010 that TOMRA would embark on a strategic process to gather all companies in the Group under one brand umbrella – TOMRA. As part of this strategic process, a new mission and vision was launched in 2012. The rebranding process was concluded in 2015.