Albert du Preez, senior vice president at TOMRA, commented: “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. The 26-strong team operating out of our new headquarters will support customers in South Africa and all other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

TOMRA Food’s sorting solutions are of increasing importance

TOMRA Food and the two other brands in the TOMRA Food family, BBC Technologies and Compac, offer world-class 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.

Norman Smith, area sales manager at TOMRA Food, said: “The new TOMRA 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 recognize and benefit from our world-class solutions.”

As an example of growing demand for these technologies, TOMRA’s 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 percent.

Compac’s regional director for Asia and South Africa, James Flocchini, commented: “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. Training, performance and service are the keys to supporting TOMRA’s clients.”

BBC Technologies’ sales manager, Joshua Miers-Jones, said: “We will continue to arrange tours to grower’s facilities to showcase the technology in a commercial environment, but our new premises show the importance of the South African market and our commitment to investing in sales and support to further enhance our presence in this region.”