Tove Andersen0:00
Hello my new colleagues. Welcome to Tomra. My name is Tove Andersen, the CEO of Tomra, and unfortunately I could not be with you today, and why I'm sending this video message from our headquarters in Asker. I live approximately half an hour from here, Oslo. I have two children who have now moved to study; one is studying engineering automation and robotics, and one is studying business and sociology. I have been the CEO of Tomra for a bit more than three years now, and I can with my hand on my heart say that I have never ever regretted for one day joining this company. And I might be a bit biased, but I do really think that Tomra is a unique company. We have amazing people, we have a great culture and a meaningful purpose, and we empower our people to be able to deliver on that.
So what do we do in Tomra? We want to lead the resource revolution. We want to enable a world without waste, a very ambitious vision. We were invented by two brothers now more than 50 years ago, 1972. Two brothers wanted to solve a problem with the retailers in Norway: they had to receive empty glass bottles, and they invented the first automatic reverse vending machine, the first automated reverse vending machine. And since then, we have grown from being two brothers to be a family of 5,500 employees. We have grown from being a Norwegian company to be a truly global company operating in more than 100 markets worldwide. We also gone from selling 17 reverse vending machines the first year till now we have more than 110,000 installations throughout the world. And we have grown from being focused on collecting beverage containers, bottles and cans, to add sorting of materials for recycling and mining, sorting for food, and now digital waste management.
I'm very excited about you joining us in Tomra. I see many opportunities on how we can work together and get value of being part of the same family. I see opportunities in how we can utilize each other's customer base and geographical footprint, expand business opportunities with solution development, digital capabilities, AI, and so forth. And I'm really looking forward to follow our teams working together to really take advantage of us being in the new, in the same company. In Tomra, our operating model is what I call that we operate as a strategic family builder. What does that mean? It is that we are a family of independent businesses, businesses that have a lot of autonomy to run their initiatives, strategies, and operations. The time that we select few things that we can create significant value by operating and working across. That model will fit very well with you. We will then make sure that you still will have the autonomy that you need and require to be able to deliver on your opportunities. At the same time, we will select the few things where we will have value of working together. And I really look forward to see how this onboarding process will then continue to deliver value both for you and us going forward.
And also Tomra's culture is extremely important, and that was an important thing that we also looked at when we considered whether you would fit into our culture. And I think there is a really good cultural fit between our two companies. Our values are innovation, passion, and responsibility. Innovation is at the heart of everything we do. We are a technology company, and we need to have the best solutions to be able to deliver the growth we want and maintain our position. Passion is all about what we do and why we do it. We care, we care for each other, we care for the environment, we care for our customers. And responsibility is about really delivering both on the financial results but also on our own impact and to have an environment that is inclusive and where people can really be themselves and deliver at their best. I think this will fit very well with your culture. Again, I'm sorry I could not be with you today. I'm very happy that several of my colleagues are with you, and I really look forward to meeting many of you in the year to come, and also to look forward to see how we will develop this joint collaboration going forward. Thank you very much, and then I look forward to develop a very interesting and exciting future together with you.
