| 37 T T Sue Russell Regional zones bring better outcomes Paul Slupecki: “Consumers these days care more and more about a food’s provenance.” TOMRA “We’ve developed a regional business model and merged our fresh and processed food divisions into the one organisation. The TOMRA Food APAC organisation includes hubs in New Zealand, Australia, India, Korea, China and Japan, which are strategically located to support the entire region.” REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Global food sorting and grading manufacturing company TOMRA Food, headquartered in Belgium, has undergone a restructuring, which its Asia and Pacific (APAC) division leader, Paul Slupecki, says will bring real benefits to its customers across the region. “We’ve developed a regional business model and merged our fresh and processed food divisions into the one organisation. The TOMRA Food APAC organisation includes hubs in New Zealand, Australia, India, Korea, China and Japan, which are strategically located to support the entire region,” says Paul, who is based in Melbourne. “The region is full of challenges and opportunities and it’s our intention to remain market leaders delivering customer-centric food sorting and grading solutions.” Strengthening TOMRA’s presence in Australia and New Zealand is a critical element to this regional focus. Already, it has over 200 people, based in Auckland, Papamoa and Melbourne, along with teams located close to customers in both countries. “Our service and product offering to our customers is backed up with a dedicated research and development facility. We’re entering a really exciting era with technologies evolving through the application of AI, and this new structure means we can deliver these advancements to our customers and better respond to their specific needs.” TOMRA Food’s manufacturing activities are based in Europe and Asia, where bespoke food- handling technologies are created through engagement with local R&D teams in each region of the world. “The whole idea behind our focusing on operating across three geographic zones around the world was to get much closer to our customers, to be more regionally based, because each zone has its own food-production demands.” Paul acknowledges that the restructuring journey is still underway, but acknowledges that 10 months along this path results are proving positive. “A lot of teams are coming together for the first time, and that’s been incredibly good to see. It means we’re able to deliver better outcomes to our customers, working at the coal-face of global food production.” World population forecasts point to the fact that by 2050, we will need to produce 70% more food than we do today. This is going to demand whole new approaches to how food is grown, sorted and processed. “If you consider Asia, there’s a shift away from the more traditional, rice-based diets towards more fresh fruit and more potato-based Western diets. To support these changes, we have focused on supplying advanced sorting and grading solutions that improve productivity while delivering consistent quality to food exporters to the Asian market.” Paul says with the challenges to meet a more discerning consumer in countries with significant populations, such as India and China, there’s the need to develop new technologies for TOMRA’s food manufacturing customers in New Zealand, technologies that will enable these manufacturers to meet escalating demand for top-quality food products. “Consumers these days care more and more about a food’s provenance. They want to know its journey, how it’s been grown, the care taken in its production, through to the place of sale. We can see that data management is going to become increasingly critical in food manufacture as consumers become more aware of food safety and require consistently higher quality of food.” The purpose of the technologies TOMRA creates for its customers, Paul says, is to increase food production capability, making it “quicker and cleaner” to improve food-quality standards and to reduce the significant amount of food waste that currently occurs through the production chain. “Our aim is to give our customers the tools to operate their food-production processes at peak, so they get the biggest bang for their buck. We achieve this by engaging with them at the factory floor level. “It’s where the capabilities of our R&D teams and our sales and customer-support people shine. By engaging with our customers, our aim is to develop sorting and grading solutions that will allow growers, packers and food processers to optimise their food-production processes, reducing food waste and delivering consistent quality produce to the market.” The values TOMRA lives by, innovation, passion and responsibility, provide the foundation through which its business activity is enacted. “We’re committed to a pathway of growth, by being responsive to our customers’ individual needs. Our continued growth will be as a result of their success and it’s those living values that drive me and all working in the company to go forward.”
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