TOMRA and Rio Tinto form strategic R&D partnership to develop new sorting systems
TOMRA Sorting Solutions' mining branch CommodasUltrasort and leading international mining group Rio Tinto will form a strategic partnership with the aim to develop commercial scale sorting systems for upgrading bulk minerals. Currently there are no solutions in the market that fulfil Rio Tinto's specifications for a requested platform. A dedicated R&D program will therefore be initiated by the two partners to develop an adequate solution.
This work will include scaling up Rio Tinto's iron ore and copper sorting technologies IronX(TM) and NuWave(TM) - which convert potentially waste rock into a commercially valuable resource - to have each machine capable of sorting 1,000 tonnes of rock an hour. TOMRA Sorting Solutions has previously been a key supplier to both IronX(TM) and NuWave(TM).
Building on substantial sorting experience
"The experience we have gained from more than 6,000 installed systems in the recycling, food and the mining industry plus experience from our ten test facilities around the world have led to significant advances in computing power, sensor technology and detection systems", says TOMRA President and CEO Stefan Ranstrand." In this strategic R&D partnership, we will apply these new technologies to bulk mineral sorting, working towards enabling a scale not previously attainable".
The standard TOMRA sorting product range will not be affected by the program.
For more information, please contact CEO Stefan Ranstrand +47 97 47 72 70 or CFO Espen Gundersen +47 97 68 73 01
TOMRA was founded on an innovation in 1972 that began with design, manufacturing and sale of reverse vending machines (RVMs) for automated collection of used beverage containers.
Today TOMRA is active in more than 50 markets worldwide and had total revenue of ~3.7 billion NOK in 2011. TOMRA has over 1,800 employees and is publicly listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
The TOMRA Group continues to innovate and provide cutting-edge solutions for optimal resource productivity within two main business areas: Collection Solutions (reverse vending, material recovery and compaction industries) and Sorting Solutions (recycling, mining and food processing industries). For more information, please see www.tomra.com (http://www.tomra.com)
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Source: Tomra Systems ASA via Thomson Reuters ONE
