Business
TOMRA: Closing the Loop
TOMRA: Closing the Loop
About this update from Tomra Systems Asa
In 1971, a grocery store owner outside Oslo complained to a sales representative about his empty bottle problem. Months later, the solution to that complaint became TOMRA. More than fifty years on, TOMRA has grown into the world's leading provider of resource optimization technology: the infrastructure behind deposit return systems on six continents, the sorting machines inside the largest recycling facilities, and the grading systems that process the majority of the world's french fries. What started as a machine for one local store now sits at the center of the circular economy.The infrastructure of circularityFor decades, waste was largely treated as the end of a product's life cycle. Increasingly, however, governments, industries, and consumers are approaching materials differently, as resources to recover, sort, and return into circulation.TOMRA has spent more than fifty years building technology at the center of that transition. What began with reverse vending machines (RVM) for returned beverage containers has expanded into a global business built around different aspects of the circular economy. Today, the company's systems are used to identify, sort, grade, and recover everything from plastic bottles and aluminum cans to industrial waste streams, potatoes, and blueberries.Across the TOMRA group, the same underlying logic has driven every expansion: solve a practical problem, build technology around it, and adapt it market by market.Before writing this article, we had the opportunity to to discuss the company's history, culture, and the road ahead. Throughout our conversation, TOMRA's operational focus turned us back to core themes of decentralization, adaptability, and maintaining the entrepreneurial mindset that has shaped TOMRA since its founding in 1972. Reflecting on the company's culture, Andersen said: “The person closest to the problem is typically best at solving it.”In many ways, that philosophy and how it scales in an organization of over 5,000 employees explains both how TOMRA operates today across its global divisions and the mindset that has shaped its history. Coincidentally, it also captures how the company began more than fifty years ago.Solving a local problemThe history of TOMRA begins with two brothers, Tore and Petter Planke, from Asker, a small town just outside Oslo. In 1971, Petter was working as a sales representative for ...