Tomra Systems ASA is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 company producing, selling and operating reverse vending machine

Reverse vending machine

A reverse vending machine is a device that accepts used beverage containers and returns money to the user . The machines are popular in places that have mandatory recycling laws or container deposit legislation. In some places, bottlers paid funds into a centralized pool to be dispersed to people...

s, used to sort and collect empty beverage containers for recycling.

The company was founded in 1972 by the brothers Petter and Tore Planke.

Reverse Vending Machines (RVM) are automated machines that utilize advanced technology to identify, sort, collect and process used beverage containers and crates. In most cases, RVMs are used in markets that have deposits on beverage containers, offering an efficient and convenient method of identifying the deposit amount of each container returned and providing a refund to the customer. More than 800 billion bottles, cans and other drink containers are produced every year. Half of them end up on landfills.

TOMRA currently has approximately 65,000 RVMs installed in over 40 countries worldwide. In North America, Tomra's main competitor is Envipco

Envipco

Envipco is a global recycling company. Envipco's corporate headquarters are located in Naugatuck, Connecticut....

.

The company headquarters are in Asker, Norway.
Its ticker symbol

Ticker symbol

A stock symbol or ticker symbol is a short abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers or a combination of both. "Ticker symbol" refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker...

 is TOM on the Oslo Stock Exchange

Oslo Stock Exchange

The Oslo Stock Exchange serves as the main market for trading in the shares of Norwegian companies. It opens at 9:00am and closes 5:30pm local time...

 (OSEBX).

History

Since Tomra was founded in the 1970s, the reverse vending and container recycling industries have changed drastically. The introduction of new bottle deposits in the United States has led to the increase in demand for both reverse vending installations and beverage container recycling plants.
The reverse vending machine itself has become much more advanced over the years. Modern machines today have multiple container recognition methods to verify that the containers are valid deposit bottles. These methods include barcode scanning, material recognition, and optical shape recognition. Nearly all of Tomra's current line of reverse vending machines feature a technology called SureReturn, a video surveillance system that provides constant monitoring and control of objects inserted into the machine, providing unmatched recognition, security and sorting capabilities.

Competition

• Repant ASA
• Reverse Vending Corporation
• Wincor Nixdorf
  Wincor Nixdorf
  Wincor Nixdorf is a German corporation that provides retail and retail banking hardware, software, and services. Wincor Nixdorf is engaged primarily in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems , retail banking equipment, lottery terminals, postal...
  
  
• Envipco