Supplier News

Tomra opens recycling business unit in North Carolina

Tomra Sorting Recycling, a sensor-based sorting technology company with headquarters in Norway, has celebrated the opening of its new Tomra Sorting Inc. office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tomra reports that the new location in North America serves as a waste and metals recycling headquarters for customers operating in North America, Central America and South America.

In addition to the new Charlotte location, Tomra Sorting Inc. has offices dedicated to the food and material sorting businesses in West Sacramento, California; Englewood, Colorado; and Shelton, Connecticut.

“Tomra’s customer base in the Americas continues to grow, and opening our Charlotte office to focus solely on waste and metals sorting is the best way to serve and support our customers and partners,” says Carlos Manchado Atienza, regional director Americas for Tomra Sorting Inc. “With Tomra’s global growth, new Circular Economy business unit and recent and planned 2020 sorting solutions releases, Tomra leads the charge for the better use of resources. Our East Coast recycling headquarters will make Tomra stronger for our customers.”

According to a news release from Tomra, the new Charlotte location serves as a hub for Tomra Sorting’s North American field sales. The location also centralizes the company’s recycling project management, inside sales, customer service and field service team members. Tomra reports that its sales and service teams in Mexico, Latin America and Brazil will also rely on the Charlotte office to streamline customer support and sales efforts.

Tomra offers a range of sensor-based sorting solutions for the waste and metal recycling industries, including Autosort, Combisense, Finder and X-Tract. The company also recently introduced new Insight and Gain technologies. Insight provides real-time monitoring of sorting lines to deliver digital metrics for the status and performance of sorting equipment, while Gain is a deep learning-based add-on to Tomra Autosort.

Dover acquires software provider to waste, recycling industry

Dover Corp., headquartered in Downers Grove, Illinois, has acquired So. Cal. Soft-Pak Inc., a San Diego-based software provider to the waste and recycling fleet industry. So. Cal. Soft-Pak offers integrated back office, route management and customer relationship management software solutions.

According to a news release from Dover, Soft-Pak has a 30-year track record of serving hundreds of waste and recycling fleets nationwide with software solutions tailored to fleet customers’ unique needs. In 2014, the company launched its Mobile-Pak in-cab connected tablet solution, which includes real-time GPS tracking, route management and various functionalities allowing integration of moving fleet data into the hauler’s back office.

Dover reports that Soft-Pak will become part of its Environmental Solutions Group business unit, a supplier of waste handling solutions to the North American waste and recycling industry in Dover’s Engineered Products segment. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition enhances Dover’s Environmental Solutions Group’s digital offerings centered around connected refuse vehicle and productivity-enhancing solutions, Dover says. Further integration between a fleet’s mobile assets, customer management and back office operations will position the company’s Environmental Solutions Group to deliver an integrated offering for the refuse vehicle market.

“We are excited to bring together Soft-Pak’s well-recognized industry-specific software solutions and [Environmental Solutions Group’s] growing software and digital portfolio. We believe the integrated solutions will drive growth of [the Environmental Solutions Group’s] core refuse vehicle offering and associated software and deliver tangible value-add to our waste and recycling industry customers,” says Richard J. Tobin, Dover president and CEO. “This transaction is another building block in Dover’s capital deployment strategy that emphasizes investments in attractive close-to-core markets that offer potential for sustainable, profitable growth.”

According to Dover, the company expects this acquisition to be accretive to the growth and margin profile of Environmental Solutions Group and Dover and to achieve double-digit return on capital in three years.